The growth of Beard

1.

Mark Beard FCIOB (left) was born with building in his blood. His grandfather Geoffrey (far right) was MD at that time, although the firm’s founder Edward (right) was still working. In fact Edward carried on working until the ripe old age of 104, earning himself a place in the Guiness Book of Records for ‘the oldest working man in Britain’.

2.

After school, Mark joined the family firm for three years, before flying the nest to experience life with two other local contractors, both of whom no longer exist: G Percy Trentham and JM Jones. “It was a personal thing. I wanted to see different parts of the industry.”

3.

It took six long years of day release for Mark to get through his CIOB exams and gain membership. “It gave me a good balance of practical and academic, but it was a hard slog,” he says. One of his fellow students at Reading Technical College was Brian Moone. (Remember the name. He’ll crop up again later.)

4.

Young Mark spread his wings further with a round-the-world ticket. During his travels he went Down Under and stopped off for six months with Sydney QS firm Rider Hunt. An article on his experiences appeared in the CIOB magazine (then called Chartered Builder) at the time.

5.

Management training at Henley prepared him for his next role as divisional director at the firm’s Newbury office. Later he took on the Oxford office too. It also led to EW Beard securing £6m-worth of building works from Henley college over eight years. “That more than paid for the course,” says Beard.

6.

In 1999 joint MDs Alan and Colin Beard step down. Uncle Colin went off to run his own firm while Dad Alan (left) oversees Beard’s property investment arm. Mark was the only contender for the MD role: neither his high-flying brother nor his cousins (an author and a Master at Eton) fancied building.

7.

Mark closed the firm’s Newbury and Cirencester offices, which have led to greater efficiencies and contributed to the rise in turnover, says Mark. He also set up best practice groups to look at IT, QA, procurement and people, adopting ideas from articles about initiatives in the US in business magazines.

8.

Mark read about the Construction Best Practice Programme in the trade press. EW Beard worked closely with CBP - which boasted old chum Brian Moone in its ranks - for four years. CBP has “changed the direction of modernisation to make it more focused on customers and business benefits,” says Mark.

9.

In 2000 EW Beard splashed out on new IT networks. Now, for example, all the company’s forms are on the system so staff don’t have to track down the relevant pad before they can print an order or invoice. “It’s a 100 small things like that that take out 1% of waste,” says Mark. This year it launched an intranet.

10.

In 2003, EW Beard won Investors in People status, but Mark wants to go further still. EW Beard has a training partnership with CIOB to put its site managers through NVQ5. 12 site managers of the 20 employed by Beard began NVQ5 last year, and half of the 60 operatives have CSCS cards.

11.

Mark employed John Youle, with a first class honours degree, and MBA and framework agreement to be construction director at Oxford and a new FD with PFI experience. “One of the challenges for me is to devolve more responsibility to other executive directors,” Mark adds.

12.

What’s next? A revamp of the firm’s customer relations management. That means identifying key customers, listening to their needs and measuring performance better. And Beard has started thinning down its supply chain. Its aim is to work with suppliers to help them with training.