In services of the

THE SMS GROUP I PROFILE

The SMS Group is a young, innovative company with a long history. As one of the UK’s leading providers of ship repair services, refits, diving and marine maintenance, the company has also established itself as a critical player for the defence industry’s service needs, and successfully operates in the dynamic cruise and ferry outfit space. Nicholas Warren and Chris Norman, Directors at The SMS Group, spoke to Richard Hagan about how the company is making waves in the UK’s marine industry and quietly building for the future.

Headquartered in Southampton, The SMS Group is one of the UK’s leading maritime maintenance, repair, refit and commercial diving service providers.

The company has a heritage dating back over 60 years to 1958. Its original founder started a small welding and marine engineering business in Kent. That business grew, and over the years, it went through a series of mergers and acquisitions until the company was rebranded as The SMS Group of today, approximately four years ago.

The SMS Group boasts facilities across eight main locations. It has three facilities that are geared towards the company’s defence sector support program, namely: Govan, in Scotland, HM Naval Base Devonport and HM Naval Base Portsmouth. Next, it has a 75m drydock with workshops and offices in Lowestoft. The company’s diving and high-speed diesel business is located in Dover as is its operation of a 3,000 tonne shiplift in Cherbourg, Northern France. Then, it has commercial ship repair hubs in both Avonmouth and Poole. Completing the list is its head office in Southampton, adjacent to the King George V drydock.

Chris Norman, Managing Director, commented: “It is this geographical reach, market spread and broad technical capability that sets us apart from others.”

THE SMS GROUP I PROFILE

Naturally, The SMS Group employs a roster of highly-trained, highly motivated specialist staff members who service the company’s various facilities and who routinely go out on emergency calls; around 50% of the group’s work involves travel to ports and harbours outside of their bases’ localities – both the workforce and service offering is fully mobile with over 40 vehicles utilised within the business.

The company has about 150 full-time employees including a senior management team of six and a general management team of 13. Impressively, around 75% of the company’s staff have been with the business for over ten years, and interestingly around half of the staff have security clearance with specific naval (also known as ‘grey ship’) experience.

The SMS Group is focused on delivering services across four main categories: defence, marine interiors and outfitting, commercial ship repair, and diving.

Supporting the defence sector

For its work in the defence sector, the company is generally subcontracted by large primary contractors including Babcock International and BAE Systems. The SMS Group is able to add value in various ways to these relationships, but two pertinent areas of expertise are tendering to win fixed price packages of work to support vessels that are in-build or in refit; or alternatively, supporting shipyards and /or shipbuilders with security cleared human resources known as SQEP; suitably qualified and experienced personnel.

Thanks to its facilities inside two of the Royal Navy’s home ports, The SMS Group is also able to assist the primary contractors with newbuild related warranty works, and other additional works during and after the commissioning of new vessels. The company also works in Scotland, providing SQEP to assist directly in shipbuilding.

A particular recent highlight of The SMS Group’s defence industry participation has been its significant involvement in the Royal Navy’s commissioning of the advanced new Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers. According to Nicholas Warren, Commercial Director, the project perfectly exemplifies the company’s capabilities.

“Defence is interesting. When we look at the expansion of, and national investment in, the Royal Navy, we’re excited and optimistic about the future,” he said. “You’ve got the new aircraft carriers, both wonderful ships, being managed extremely well. It has illustrated to the world the capabilities of shipbuilding in this country.”

THE SMS GROUP I PROFILE

Via its facility within HM Naval Base Devonport, The SMS Group supports Babcock International’s submarine and surface ship business. “What that means is that we have expertise in warships and submarines, and we have technical management that understands both. The resource and knowledge is transferable allowing us to move in around the country, from project-to-project,” said Mr Warren.

“That skillset allows us to perform infrastructure work too –which includes major valve replacements, the overhaul of penstocks or caissons, or even refurbishments of the actual physical naval base infrastructure. We’ve been very lucky that our expertise and resources understand the ships and the shoreside infrastructure within the bases. That has allowed us to deliver various maintenance packages in both a ship-side and shore-side environment.”

The company is committed to ongoing investment in new facilities, plant and equipment, and also additional locations, to ensure that it can keep pace with the growing demands from the defence industry.

“Our continued focus on defence will see us build additional locations in Scotland and also, potentially, move closer to the submarine sector,” Mr Warren disclosed. “Here, it will be all about the people, and ensuring that we have the right teams – colleagues with security clearance – in the right place, when we need them.”

He added: “We can foresee a capacity and a capability challenge in the defence sector. We’re entering into an incredibly busy time for the UK maritime defence sector; there are two shipyards in Scotland moving into full production, plus there’s a new fleet to be built for UK Border Force, the FSS programme and potentially a National Flagship – as well as other programmes. We want to be in a position to support those programmes; we definitely don’t want to build ships, but we do want to support those that do.”

Cruise and ferry outfit works

As we all know, the onset of the pandemic led to a shutdown of the cruise industry internationally. Fortunately, the industry is slowly recovering and getting its ships back into service. In the UK, the epicentre of cruise ship reactivations is Southampton and this has delivered a real ace for The SMS Group, as Mr Warren noted.

“We’re the only ship repairer located inside the Port of Southampton. We’re close to all of the cruise terminals and our expertise here is second-to-none,” he said. “Our welding, fabrication, pipe and mechanical teams understand larger tonnage, and the requirements onboard cruise ships, and moreover they have specific experience working on them.

We’ve also got a highly capable team working on the interior outfitting of those ships. So we’re able to support both aspects of the cruise ship business. It’s not often that you can put both of these strings to your bow; we’re unique in this sense.”

Speaking of the company’s own response to Covid-19, Mr Warren said the pandemic has not only made the business stronger, but has also reinforced the importance of the industry as a whole.

“The sector has proven to be very resilient and everybody in the industry really pulled together. Harbours had to keep trading because when all is said and done, we’re an island nation, so we upped the relevant safety protocols and we carried on.

“Basing the business around eight geographical locations means that we’d always used Teams to communicate internally, but never really with clients and suppliers. But we’ve learned to do business with those two groups remotely and it’s saved us huge travel expenses and has allowed us to actually communicate better.”

“It’s also brought us all closer together as a general management team; we’ve shared the pain and built the business back together. When lockdown came, lots of companies immediately felt fear – as we all freely admit. But it pulled us together as a team. We set our objectives and got on with it together: something that sets The SMS Group apart is the camaraderie and our ‘can do’ attitude. I’m honoured to be part of the management team – it’s a great company.”

In recent times, the company’s work in the cruise and ferry outfitting space has involved a great deal of investment in facilities, plant, equipment and personnel and those investments are delivering extremely strong results.

“Our outfit business has grown by 100% year-on-year for the last three years,” revealed Mr Warren. “We’ve made investments in premises, people and capacity and we’ve invested in storage space. I think as we move further into the outfit industry, we’d like to consider things like stand-alone premises and the ability for continuous, concurrent working. At the moment we can deliver three or four projects simultaneously, but we need to get to five or six. We need to see continuous progress in our outfit business; outfit is a big part of our future as a group.”

Diving and call-out operations

Commercial diving is also a core part of the company’s service offering and one that, again, is earmarked for strong growth in the future through continued investment. The company recently invested in equipment that will allow it to deploy two dive teams simultaneously, and plans are already in place to increase that to three or even four in the not too distant future.

The company’s specialised diving and subsurface engineering team are uniquely security cleared, and have created an opportunity to build a specialist service working on key national infrastructure, which is quite a big deal, as Mr Warren pointed out.

“It’s very different to working on an in-water survey or a fouled propeller/shaft line,” he noted, “You have a higher level of risk, a more challenging degree of preparation, and a high level of security clearance is often required. You must adhere to a more stringent set of rules, with a higher reporting level. It can require months of planning and a tremendous amount of patience, but that’s all part of the job and we’re happy to do it.”

The SMS Group makes use of both traditional divers in the water, and a selection of ROVs to carry out its various diving services and underwater engineering tasks.

“Deploying a man in the water requires a team of five, whereas an ROV only needs a trained pilot, so an ROV can survey very costeffectively,” Mr Warren detailed. “If we can use an ROV then we will do so; it’s definitely becoming more and more prevalent. But if it’s underwater engineering, or works such as a fouled shaft, propellor or rudder, then you need to have a person, (or persons) in the water.”

Of course, carrying out work anywhere requires getting teams and equipment to the site at which they’re required, quickly and efficiently. That’s where the company’s fleet of over 40 specialised road vehicles comes into play. The fleet consists of minibuses, mobile workshops and low-loaders based in various strategic locations.

“To be a ship repairer, you need to be able to repair ships, and that often comes with a moment’s notice,” emphasised Mr Warren.

“Our business is built around a responsive operating model and we are able to – and do – attend ships all day, even in ports that we don’t have local premises. We specialise in these emergency repairs and short-notice response calls; it’s an exciting space.”

Future success

Reflecting on the challenges of the past year or so, Mr Norman added: “2020 was undoubtedly a challenging year. That said, we easily kept our head above water and we’ve laid solid, exciting, plans for the future. These will include a focus on cruise and ferry outfit, investment in diving, our continued endeavours in defence, and staying true ourselves and our historical foundations in the commercial ship repair sector.”

Mr Norman concluded: “My sincerest thanks go to both colleagues and customers – our future success is so dependent on both. I can genuinely say that all of our colleagues within The SMS Group have been exemplary in both their commitment and commercial endeavours, and our customers have been both loyal and forthcoming. Thank you so, so much.” n