Sharkey

Source: Construction Digital

Date :23/10/2007 14:42:25

Vision, Vitality and Responsiveness

CEO Scott Sharkey tells Exec UK about the company’s commitment to continuous improvement and people development

Written by Alison Withers & Produced by Mark Skillicorn

What started as a small family business has now evolved into a group, under the name Sharkey, with eight companies within it. Sharkey is a property group providing solutions in property services, investment and development. Scott and Stephen Sharkey have expanded the company rapidly and it is now Scotland’s premier provider of interior fit-out solutions. Clients have included Standard Life, HBOS, RBS, Virgin, and Ernst and Young.

George Sharkey started the company in Edinburgh, in 1969 after some years as a sole trader of joinery services. His sons joined the company in the 1980s and worked their way up through the ranks until they took control in 1998 as joint Managing Directors

Scott Sharkey, 40, became the group’s CEO in 2005 and Stephen is MD of what is now one of the group’s eight divisions, Sharkey Fit Out. Scott Sharkey says they still have the same core values of high quality as when the company was founded. He started aged 15 as an apprentice joiner and worked his way up through the ranks as his father wished. He believes absolutely that this was “fabulous training” even though he didn’t understand it at the time. He cites one example: “If I was asked to dig a hole, I then knew how long it took, could estimate, invoice and organize it. It also gives you intimate knowledge of the job a worker is doing. You can empathise.”

People first

The group board consists of just two people, the CEO and the Financial Director, though there are plans in the coming months to add an MD who will be recruited internally. Each of the eight companies within the group has its own management structure. Fundamental to all the operations is a policy of providing sustainable, quality solutions, which can sometimes add to cost in the shorter term but provide benefits and savings in the longer term. Scott Sharkey says: “Clients are driven by cost and quality and don’t necessarily go beyond that. That’s a frustration for us because there are other factors – we think beyond the point where the job is finished, but it’s the client’s choice whether they listen to our advice or not.”

He estimates that 25 percent of the company’s clients will go with it even if it involves higher costs, of the other 75 percent about half will go some way along the route of bespoke solutions. Sharkey sees clients and customers as completely different. Clients, who form the majority of the business, negotiate work and the result is repeat business. They tend to accept advice and get an exceptional service as a result.

Customers also get a good service, but are primarily cost driven so tend to ask for competitive tenders, which doesn’t result in repeat business. “One of the things we are told by clients is we deliver five out of five: Quality, Programme (on time), Sustainable Solutions, Budget (within the price) and a very high level of Service. According to our clients, all the competition allegedly we have in the UK delivers four out of five,“ says Scott Sharkey. “In our opinion we should not fail to deliver on all of those things and we’ve never, ever, failed on that.”

Sustainability is a theme that runs through the group’s work methods as well as the advice given to clients. This theme has meant that for some years waste has been segregated and much can be sold on to recycling companies, a cost benefit as compared to paying for skips and unsorted waste. Operating on a basis of continuous improvement Kaizen and 5 Sigma methods are used in the joinery factory. The company, says Scott Sharkey, spends a huge amount on improving its IT – including £100,000 in the last year on improving the office software, which covers the spectrum through design and manufacturing to accounts and employs three full time IT people.

Arguably, sustainability and the emphasis on quality underpins the policy on employees. Partly to address local skills shortages, Sharkey has its own apprentice’s academy and employs an in-house skilled workforce (including 55 apprentices) rather than sub contracting. Apprentices are indentured for four years and expected to achieve SVQ level 2 on completion of all college modules followed by SVQ level 3 on completion of the apprentice programme and final skills test. There’s an annual apprentice of the year competition. It also runs ongoing training to ensure employees can progress their careers and runs a programme that follows on from the apprenticeship scheme, but is also open to entry level graduates. It includes core skills like customer care, project management, leadership, time management and IT training.

Scott Sharkey dislikes the definitions “professional” and “trade” which he sees as a disincentive to young people joining the so-called trades. He believes this has led to a shortage of skilled plumbers, electricians and joiners, all of which Sharkey has in-house.

Nor are there any age barriers. One employee expected to have to retire at 65, though he did not want to. Says Scott Sharkey: “We asked what he would like to do, he gave us his list and we said “do it”. When he says he wants to go, fine, but we would not force him to leave. It’s about loyalty. He’s been with us 20 years and I’m happy to go another 20 with him. Just because you reach 50 or 60, it doesn’t mean that you have lost your skills. How ridiculous - having invested all that money in someone, you would be an idiot to lose them.”

Continuous improvement

With policies of continuous improvement and sustainability in place and no limits to his vision, Scott Sharkey says the reality is that “some of our changes are made because of the quality of the people coming up through the academy. At the end of the day I promote people up and keep pushing people up.”

The most important thing about continuous improvement, in his view, is vision and the flexibility to adapt quickly to new developments and ideas, not thinking in compartments. And the most important ingredient in that, he believes, is passion.

About 18 months ago he started thinking about what a nightmare it was for small businesses and sole traders starting out to be able to get support services and meeting rooms they could afford. The result is Bilston Glen, just outside Edinburgh – a former 12,000 sq ft of office space and sheds, which was recreated by Sharkey Space (one of the group’s divisions) allowing people to rent meeting space or a shed for storage, with no fixed term contract limits, no rules and it’s open to adaptation to fit users’ needs. It’s also equipped with receptionists, a restaurant/canteen for entertaining clients, a gym, car washing and the result is a small community who are now doing business with each other. The next phase is expanding the concept to include affordable accommodation for young people starting out along with coffee shops and a shopping area. It’s 50 percent full already - in just six months - and in time, Sharkey’s group HQ will move there.

He plans to create another such community, currently a “work in progress”, and he aims to extend the group’s operations and its unique way of working to the UK. He says he’s “hugely passionate about changing the world” and quotes a saying of his mother’s from 25 years ago: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always got”.