Built Environment Consulting (BEC) is celebrating a decade in business, attributing its personal relationships and long-term recruitment philosophy as key to growth in the service sector.
The building services consultancy, which is also celebrating its three-year anniversary at its Castle Donington office, can call upon a staff of 20, including engineers, specialised CAD operators using both 2D and 3D CAD (Revit) packages, which has placed the firm in an ideal position to provide design services for a large portfolio of varied clients and projects.
BEC has undertaken a number of BIM projects to Level II and the firm has recognised that BIM will play an ever-increasing role in the procurement of state funded projects from 2016.
The firm has a long history of working with contractors, which it still considers as a significant market place, and one it will continue to value and operate in.
Carl Ackers, director at Built Environment Consulting said: “BEC is focused on sustainable and organic growth. Our aim is to employ high calibre staff to help ensure that our service is the best we are able to provide. We will always try and avoid being a ‘bums on seats’ type of employer and will always strive to offer the best service to both our existing and future clients.
“After ten years in the industry we have managed to successfully adopt and implement this philosophy in to our recruitment strategy. We try to ensure that staff responsible for a given project remain on that project from inception to completion as this ensures that there is continuity throughout the project.”
BEC has invested heavily in ensuring that it has the expertise and working tools in terms of software packages and associated training, to enable the firm to offer full design services to BIM Level II, either working for the client or architect, main contractor or building services contractor.
Through focussing on customers’ needs and requirements, careful recruitment, strategic management and investment in software and hardware, the firm is positioned to offer a range of services to the market place including mechanical and electrical engineering, BIM services to level II, thermal modelling providing SBEM’s, EPC and SAP calculations, BREEAM support and specialist lighting design.
During the first few years in business, BEC operated as a successful small consultancy practice serving the local East Midlands market. Following an initial period of steady growth, the consultancy reached a position where to realise its full potential, an investment of engineers and management was required.
The current directors of BEC, Mark McConnell and Carl Ackers, worked together initially at Pick Everard in Leicester, with a major part of their responsibility being to establish Pick Everard’s Republic of Ireland office in Galway.
After six years in business, Mark met Carl at the East Midlands CIBSE annual dinner function.
Mark and Carl promised each other, while working at Pick Everard, that they would one day start their own business, and so during the meal, the first discussions started and plans were hatched for Carl to join BEC.
At BEC, Mark is now responsible for the financial aspects of the business while Carl manages the business systems such as ISO9001, BIM and other operational aspects.
Carl added: “We’ve had a fantastic ten years in business, and through careful recruitment and training we feel that we are in a strong position to target bigger projects and establish new clients.
“While it is a still a very volatile, and sometimes difficult, market place, we are delighted that we have managed to grow the business as we have through, what were, difficult times. The future looks very bright for BEC and we will be making many more announcements in the coming months.”
