Too much of a good thing?

The Window Company (Contracts) has warned against taking on too much work as the industry continues to battle with a shortage of skilled fitters.

Chair, David Thornton, explained: “For the first time ever, we have turned down the opportunity to tender for some of the CIF funded work available in schools over the summer because we don’t believe it will benefit our business in the short to medium term.

“We pride ourselves on being a good company to work for and our rates of pay and benefits package are amongst the best in the industry, but we would still find it challenging to find enough resource to cope with significant extra volumes at this point.

“All our existing teams are fully occupied with ongoing contracts and pre-planned schools work, and we won’t jeopardise existing work just for the sake of additional volume,” continued David.

“It’s the old adage ‘turnover is vanity, profit is sanity’ and while it goes against every entrepreneurial instinct to turn down work, we think it’s the right decision for our business. Time and again we see good companies fail simply because they overstretch themselves and while there is insufficient skilled labour in the market, that could become a very real danger for some.

“We are arguably at just about the optimal size for an installation business at the moment, with a tightly knit senior team that can still oversee every project individually. We still have capacity for growth, primarily because we have invested in tech solutions which make us operationally efficient, but we are realistic about current state of the labour market, and we are becoming increasingly selective about the additional work we take on.”