£1m: The value of the largest contract RMW Electrical has taken on to date
Mark Tudor
Christine Whitrick
nursing homes. “It dwindled a bit in the late 1990s, but now people are looking at fire alarms more sensibly, rather than as something they’ve just got to have,” he says. The business has developed a good relationship with local fire authorities too, which often recommend it to potential clients. Over time, RMW developed a number of other significant relationships, particularly with Shropshire Council and Telford & Wrekin Council, taking on work with local schools. But by the time Christine took over, it had become very reliant on these, and suffered when it was unsuccessful in achieving a place on Shropshire’s framework in 2007. “You can get complacent and perhaps we did,” admits Christine. “We’ve learned now that it is not wise to concentrate heavily on one source of work, and we started to look at new projects.” The determination to diversify was strengthened further when the business was caught out by a local construction firm going out of business. “One of our busiest periods of contracting work is the six-week school holiday period and we had completed a sizeable school project, only to discover at the end of it that the main contractor had declared themselves bankrupt,” says Christine. “We received no payment from them for the work and that really hurt us. It left us feeling apprehensive about future contracting work so we started to look at adding other work to our portfolio.”
Chicken feed This drive for new business has seen RMW develop something of a niche area working on newbuild poultry houses, taking advantage of its rural location. “A lot of farmers are moving away from dairy and sugar beet and towards poultry farming, and there seemed to be a gap in the market,” says Mark Tudor, business coordination manager, who has been with the business since 1999, and whose father and son also work for RMW. “We were in the right place at the right time.” This work originally came when the business was introduced to a local farmer back in 2010, he says, but has since led to further work in farmhouses and grain stores, as well as other farms. “We work closely with the construction team, to the point where they now send the plans to us and we then send it back to the client,” says Mark. “It’s totally changed the way it’s done, from being the last trade in to getting our cables in as it’s being built.” Shopping centres have also been added to the list of new clients; one of them on the recommendation of a local building contractor. “We work at Telford Shopping Centre, where we’ve been working night shifts and we also carry out the emergency light testing every month,” says Mark. “We work within the offices and buildings attached to them, undertaking general electrical maintenance work.” This, in turn, has also led to other Connections Summer 2015
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Photography: Mike Poloway/UNP
Pat Harte
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