Commercial Performance

We recently took some time to sit down with Chris Ellis our commercial director to discuss the companies general performance in recent years.

So how has business been for GroupMetropolitan?

Throughout 2021 and into 2022, we have seen a buoyant construction market, with GroupMetropolitan growing substantially through this period, like many others. Global events have led to a lot of uncertainty, but thankfully this hasn’t negatively affected our order book. In fact, it seems to have had the opposite effect.

Are there any things you can attribute this growth to in particular?

During the pandemic, the major upturn was seen as clients vacated their buildings to a working from home model, providing opportunity to upgrade critical infrastructure which would normally have affected normal business operation. More recently though we rebranded to promote our full turnkey service, integrating main contractor management with our in-house trade packages, which has led to earlier engagement with clients. This appears to be a trend across the industry, with other larger contractors making similar comments.?

How did you spot this trend and make a proactive transition towards it?

Our initial experience of early engagement came via one of our key clients on Canary Wharf. We had been working with them via a long-standing traditional framework agreement but they recently chose to modernise. The new agreement rewards collaboration from the point of engagement, which is often at feasibility stage through to outline scheme design. Basically we get our eyes on the clients potential projects at a much earlier stage and offer them detailed advice.

Allowing a technical contractor to work as consultants provides the client a much better understanding of the project’s buildability, risks, and ultimately cost, which is a huge benefit when developing CAPEX budgets.

So Frameworks and Turnkey projects heavily benefit the client, but how does it benefit you?

From a contractor perspective, it provides much greater clarity on long-term workload, allowing investment in resources and training. It has allowed us to increase our intake of trade apprentices and bring the next generation of talent into the industry.

With the rapidly changing landscape in relation to lead times of major plant, this approach also provides the benefit of engaging suppliers to secure manufacturing slots in line with project timelines.

We are known for our quality of work and service delivery. This relies heavily on a strong skilled labour force and reliable supply chain, these arrangements enable us to invest and build on these channels and relationships with confidence.

Would you say this is just a “fad” driven by the uncertainty of the pandemic, or do you see this as a shift that's long term?

We have seen this method adopted by several clients now, and due to its successes, would expect others to follow suit for the foreseeable future. The benefits can be seen for all parties and so we see this as a long term strategy change around client procurement of trusted contractors to deliver their projects.