Celebrating our 45th year in business, Interclass is a family-owned, Midlands based, principal contractor. Since Interclass was founded in 1976 as a groundworks company by Chris Watkins, who remains with the business today, the company has gone from strength-to-strength with a wealth of experience across multiple sectors, delivering projects ranging from £250,000 to £10,000,000.
Interclass has long-standing and trusted relationships with some of the region’s largest organisations, including Aston University, Dudley Council, Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and Solihull Council, our client for our largest project which completed last year.
Indeed, over 80% of our work last year was from repeat business, however we also acquired new clients including Midlands Arts Centre and Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust, both of which negotiated further projects with us which is testament to our performance.
Our diverse yet complimentary expertise within the business has provided sustainable growth and financial stability. Despite a challenging 12 months, Interclass fought resiliently throughout, coming out the other side with a controlled, record secured orderbook of £27m for 2021/22, doubled from 2020/21, and an opportunity pipeline in excess of £230million.
One of the biggest milestones in the company’s history was securing a place on Lot 1 of the Constructing West Midlands Framework in 2020, as the only SME with a turnover and headcount significantly less than the next largest contractor.
In 2020, we published our first sustainability report outlining our strategy for zero-carbon to be ‘business as usual’ by 2030.
Our teams carried out 1296 hours of volunteering across a range of activities and organisations supported included Canley Food Hub, Birmingham & Solihull’s Women’s Aid, St John the Divine, Property for Kids and The Hope Centre.
Interclass holds its employees central to its ongoing success, and this aligns with our mission to build a legacy of excellence by developing high performing people. Our commitment to training the next generation means our apprentices will always be an integral part of Interclass and its long-term future. Over the last 18 months we have taken time and care investing in new resource of a calibre that allows for the ongoing development of the business as well as the mentoring and continuous professional development of our existing team.
Protecting the culture of the company was a high priority as we embarked on this period of planned growth with a number of people joining Interclass. To assist with this transition, we introduced an internal communications programme and launched a new website and brand refresh. We have also invested heavily in IT infrastructure and using digital tools such as Plan Radar, Bluebeam and GetOnSite to streamline our processes.
Finally, in response to the material shortages currently facing the industry, we have revolutionised our procurement processes to bring a unified approach to our supply chain management. This has brought many benefits including meeting programmes, to ensuring localism and social value targets are met.
During this difficult year, we also provided advanced payments to subcontractors to aid their cash flow on numerous occasions to ensure survival.
