Carrilion in trouble

[Blue62]

GT03ROB said:

But isn't that just companies reacting to the way tenders are awarded? I spent a long time working for a very successful LSTK EPC contractor. We would evaluate & award bids from subcontractors based on a sensitivity & equalisation analysis of their proposal not their actual proposal. It meant we didn't always award to the lowest bidder. The fault lies in the evaluation & award process. I repeat buy cheap buy twice. The same company executes work for the UK government very profitably without carillon's issues.

I agree with the sentiment, but I personally believe it runs deeper than that in the public sector and I think there are idealogical issues driving the process. It's similar to the great council house sell off, where a few people made a quick buck but problems were stored up for the future. The latest NHS framework was a case in point, the actual tender process over ran by 2 years (it's supposed to be on a 4 year cycle) and when the tender finally came out it was clear that the award process was geared to price, from memory it contributed 70% to the overall score.

Three years on and line managers continue to engage at a ratio of almost 50% with non framework suppliers operating on higher margins, because the framework suppliers cannot supply at the price point they were forced to tender at, while senior management turns a blind eye. The tax payer (as may well happen with Carillon) picks up the bill.

[Leroy902]

Get a German company to come take over. Show how its all done efficiently, and to a high standard.

[crankedup]

Jockman said:

GT03ROB said:

But isn't that just companies reacting to the way tenders are awarded? I spent a long time working for a very successful LSTK EPC contractor. We would evaluate & award bids from subcontractors based on a sensitivity & equalisation analysis of their proposal not their actual proposal. It meant we didn't always award to the lowest bidder. The fault lies in the evaluation & award process. I repeat buy cheap buy twice. The same company executes work for the UK government very profitably without carillon's issues.

I do a lot of work with the Coop, Rob. They are >very< interested in the financial health of my company and whilst price is important they use a variety of metrics in deciding on tenders.

Co-op founded 1844 (may be stretching it a little)
Carillion founded 1999.

OK the co-op have had recent problems but had the strength and asset value behind it to be able to ride it through. Whereas Carillion !

[hairyben]

Is carrillion that much worse than the rest of the industry?

IME there are no construction companies that aren't riddled with arse-covering incompetents bullying and bullish!ting and nepotising their way through life. How anything ever gets done is a wonder to me, when hardworking, diligent and skilled people are generally considered a threat.

Add into that local authority incompetence and indifference, and that leads you to tradgedies like grenfell, sadly something that didn't surprise me in the least.

[Rovinghawk]

hairyben said:

Is carrillion that much worse than the rest of the industry?

Yes.

[anonymous-user]

crankedup said:

Co-op founded 1844 (may be stretching it a little)
Carillion founded 1999.

OK the co-op have had recent problems but had the strength and asset value behind it to be able to ride it through. Whereas Carillion !

The co-op also inject cash from there other companies into the co-op brand to keep it afloat.

Whereas carillion doesn't.

[crankedup]

BAM225 said:

crankedup said:

Co-op founded 1844 (may be stretching it a little)
Carillion founded 1999.

OK the co-op have had recent problems but had the strength and asset value behind it to be able to ride it through. Whereas Carillion !

The co-op also inject cash from there other companies into the co-op brand to keep it afloat.

Whereas carillion doesn't.

Yes, as I mentioned they have an asset base. Carillion have sfa except a Board of Directors consisting of total incompetence and arrogance, a former CEO who swayed off last September taking a six million pound ta very much and a massive group of subbie Companies that many have not been paid in months. The fall out is going to be a disaster for many good hard working SME and thier employees. And posters in here questioned why I had the terremity to raise the Carilion issue last November

[anonymous-user]

crankedup said:

Yes, as I mentioned they have an asset base. Carillion have sfa except a Board of Directors consisting of total incompetence and arrogance, a former CEO who swayed off last September taking a six million pound ta very much and a massive group of subbie Companies that many have not been paid in months. The fall out is going to be a disaster for many good hard working SME and thier employees. And posters in here questioned why I had the terremity to raise the Carilion issue last November

Anyone in the construction industry knows to avoid carillion like the plaque anyway in all honesty.

Of course if you like your workers being killed and carillion not learning lessons + plus never being paid on time (if at all) then carillion are the best company to work for / do business with!

[2 sMoKiN bArReLs]

BAM225 said:

Anyone in the construction industry knows to avoid carillion like the plaque

...yes, a bad sign

[crankedup]

BAM225 said:

crankedup said:

Yes, as I mentioned they have an asset base. Carillion have sfa except a Board of Directors consisting of total incompetence and arrogance, a former CEO who swayed off last September taking a six million pound ta very much and a massive group of subbie Companies that many have not been paid in months. The fall out is going to be a disaster for many good hard working SME and thier employees. And posters in here questioned why I had the terremity to raise the Carilion issue last November

Anyone in the construction industry knows to avoid carillion like the plaque anyway in all honesty.

Of course if you like your workers being killed and carillion not learning lessons + plus never being paid on time (if at all) then carillion are the best company to work for / do business with!

Yes indeed, sadly when Carilion win contracts they have a nasty habit of hovering up all the small Companies and one man bands previously employed by the losing Company (s).These are the people I have some sympathy for, caught in the st storm. The Government need to learn from this sorry state of affairs, but likely won’t.

[wc98]

hairyben said:

Is carrillion that much worse than the rest of the industry?

IME there are no construction companies that aren't riddled with arse-covering incompetents bullying and bullish!ting and nepotising their way through life. How anything ever gets done is a wonder to me, when hardworking, diligent and skilled people are generally considered a threat.

Add into that local authority incompetence and indifference, and that leads you to tradgedies like grenfell, sadly something that didn't surprise me in the least.

i think uk industry in general is afflicted this way, not just the construction sector. company leaders need to have more skin in the game and bigger penalties when it goes tits up. with the big rewards should come big responsibility and harsh penalties when taking the piss.

[anonymous-user]

crankedup said:

Yes indeed, sadly when Carilion win contracts they have a nasty habit of hovering up all the small Companies and one man bands previously employed by the losing Company (s).These are the people I have some sympathy for, caught in the st storm. The Government need to learn from this sorry state of affairs, but likely won’t.

Hence, a few us in the industry saying fk carillion and good riddance!

[Yipper]

wc98 said:

hairyben said:

Is carrillion that much worse than the rest of the industry?

IME there are no construction companies that aren't riddled with arse-covering incompetents bullying and bullish!ting and nepotising their way through life. How anything ever gets done is a wonder to me, when hardworking, diligent and skilled people are generally considered a threat.

Add into that local authority incompetence and indifference, and that leads you to tradgedies like grenfell, sadly something that didn't surprise me in the least.

i think uk industry in general is afflicted this way, not just the construction sector. company leaders need to have more skin in the game and bigger penalties when it goes tits up. with the big rewards should come big responsibility and harsh penalties when taking the piss.

Carillion is yet another British disaster of top management hubris bordering on fraud, incompetent accounting-oversight audits, lazy government regulation, and British banks not supporting British companies in their hour of need.

The low-asset, high-debt failure of Carillion is basically the same mess the Scottish and Northern English banks got themselves into 10-15 years ago. History is repeating itself. We never seem to learn. It's a depressing tale.

[FN2TypeR]

2 sMoKiN bArReLs said:

BAM225 said:

Anyone in the construction industry knows to avoid carillion like the plaque

...yes, a bad sign

[kylos27]

Yipper , a bit like lloyds and Barclays ?

[Shamrock_]

hairyben said:

Is carrillion that much worse than the rest of the industry?

IME there are no construction companies that aren't riddled with arse-covering incompetents bullying and bullish!ting and nepotising their way through life. How anything ever gets done is a wonder to me, when hardworking, diligent and skilled people are generally considered a threat.

Add into that local authority incompetence and indifference, and that leads you to tradgedies like grenfell, sadly something that didn't surprise me in the least.

I think you already know the answer to your own question.

It reminds me of one construction company that is no longer trading that held a significant number of cost plus and pain / gain share contracts with local authorities. Many of the contractual charges were for assets that never existed or services that were never provided (i.e. x number of vehicles working on the contract when it was y, x number of vehicles out gritting when it was y, x amount of time repairing potholes when it was actually y, etc).

The quantity surveyors went to great lengths to create an auditable paper trail for these false charges. The pressure came from the directors as it was all about the profit. The police investigated numerous times due to tip offs however the line from the directors to all staff was to say nothing as police were never going to be able to unpick the audit trails. The directors were also shareholders so had a clear motivation to increase profit.

This generated tens of millions of pounds of additional profit for this company. When challenged, the directors and QS team would state it was all about maximising the value of contractual opportunities and that the entire industry operated in exactly the same way. The QS team and directors are all working for different firms within the same industry.

It's sad to think of how much tax payers money was wasted. However, the local authority teams that were supposed to audit such work were so clueless, overstaffed and inefficient that it seemed like both parties objective was to spend as much money as possible without any thought for value for money. As one senior member of the local authority leadership team put it, "if we don't spend the budget this year then we get a reduced budget next year."

[GT03ROB]

The Uk construction industry is badly flawed & has been for decades. Historically it was founded in 2 areas :

Firstly the uncompetitive easy world of housebuilding.
Secondly the equally uncompetitive world of public sector tendering.

Historically there were no major private sector projects. this meant that the UK contractors never learned how to execute projects effectively or efficiently.

Carillon are merely a symptom of this. Where are the world leading British construction companies......... how come their foreign equivalents have found the Uk easy & profitable pickings??

[Jockman]

BAM225 said:

crankedup said:

Co-op founded 1844 (may be stretching it a little)
Carillion founded 1999.

OK the co-op have had recent problems but had the strength and asset value behind it to be able to ride it through. Whereas Carillion !

The co-op also inject cash from there other companies into the co-op brand to keep it afloat.

Whereas carillion doesn't.

Sadly not many co-op 'other companies' left.

[Smiler.]

GT03ROB said:

The Uk construction industry is badly flawed & has been for decades. Historically it was founded in 2 areas :

Firstly the uncompetitive easy world of housebuilding.
Secondly the equally uncompetitive world of public sector tendering.

Historically there were no major private sector projects. this meant that the UK contractors never learned how to execute projects effectively or efficiently.

Carillon are merely a symptom of this. Where are the world leading British construction companies......... how come their foreign equivalents have found the Uk easy & profitable pickings??

Spot on.

[davepoth]

GT03ROB said:

Carillon are merely a symptom of this. Where are the world leading British construction companies......... how come their foreign equivalents have found the Uk easy & profitable pickings??

Plenty of them, just that oddly they don't seem to get too heavily involved in UK infrastructure. Mainly they're consulting engineers rather than fully vertically integrated companies though, replicating the current UK model of chiefly exporting know-how.