SGI News

SGi Shepherd Gilmour reports 100 per cent growth in turnover

SGi Shepherd Gilmour has grown its turnover from £600,000 to £1.2 million in the past 12 months.

The Manchester Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Consultancy was unified by long-term employee and Director for over 20 years, Emyr Jones in March 2015 and soon underwent a management restructure to reinforce the strength and the capability of the company

Emyr, who is also Managing Director, has since grown the team from six to fifteen.

He said repeat business with blue chip clients including Peel Holdings, Nurton Developments and Glenbrook Property, as well as landing a contract for the delivery of BUPA’s new Head Office in Media City is behind SGi Shepherd Gilmour’s recent turnover growth.

“Turnover has shot up 100 per cent to £1.2 million in the past 12 months,” said 46-year-old Emyr, who grew up in North Wales working on a farm.

“Despite Brexit, the good thing is that our workload is expanding. As it stands I see no real sign of insecurity in our market, but I suppose the acid test will be the volume of new projects that will be starting in 12 months’ time.”

 Shepherd Gilmour was formed by Peter Gilmour in Manchester more than 50 years ago.

It was originally based in Peter Street in Manchester and moved to Liverpool Road in the 80’s. In 2000 the business moved to Chester Road on the outskirts of the City Centre before Emyr took it back to its original home on Peter Street, in Manchester city centre, earlier this year

The likes of Bass and De Vere Hotels were clients from the beginning and descendants of those companies still are today.

More lately the company has acted for Quorum Property on the building of Stockport Homes’ new head office in the centre of Stockport and have a development programme of ‘new build’ Village Urban Resorts up and down the country SGi Shepherd Gilmour also provides significant volumes of pre planning and delivery engineering work for clients such as Property Alliance Group, Pochin, db symmetry DB Symmetry and Eric Wright group.

“The vast proportion of our work comes from longstanding strong relationships,” said Emyr, who lives in Urmston with his wife Joely and two daughters.

“Around 90 per cent is repeat business, some of which you can trace back to the 1960s.

“We are not a large company but we are efficient and have a wide client base, a client base that we want to nurture and grow”

 

 

“We are looking at a number of PRS schemes - Pomona Wharf, Pomona Island where the buildings can currently be seen coming out of the ground, where we are acting as the civil and structural engineers for Rowlinson Construction. In the coming weeks, work will commence on the redevelopment of Ellesmere Street in Manchester.  We acted for Glenbrook on the production of the planning support reports and produced a tender design to allow them to obtain Planning Permission and let a construction contract for this £28 million development.

Following the 2015 management restructure, which saw Emyr take over as owner and Managing Director of SGi Shepherd Gilmour, it’s been a busy period.

Emyr said: “I’ve gone through a tough couple of years getting to grips with every part of the business as well investing in technology to give the staff the best and most advanced design tools. It’s taken a tremendous amount of my time and investment, but the result is that we have reshaped a well-respected consultancy into a more flexible and client friendly, service focused business. We are trying to create a flexible and modern working environment to enable us to attract and keep the best available staff and have an immediate requirement for two more skilled engineers.”

He added: “Engineers can be invisible but we pride ourselves in providing good strong support for our clients. We want to be around for another 50 years and beyond.”