Interserve gone!
Discussion
I worked for Interserve for a short peiod of time last year abroad. It should of been longer but what i saw and the role being miss-sold i left.
Wrote a very eloquent resignation letter highlighting their failings. Was asked after i sent it to stay on with more money mentioned. Turned them down without thinking about it.
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money. They deserve what they got but i hope certain people do not lose they jobs over this.
Wrote a very eloquent resignation letter highlighting their failings. Was asked after i sent it to stay on with more money mentioned. Turned them down without thinking about it.
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money. They deserve what they got but i hope certain people do not lose they jobs over this.
petop said:
I worked for Interserve for a short peiod of time last year abroad. It should of been longer but what i saw and the role being miss-sold i left.
Wrote a very eloquent resignation letter highlighting their failings. Was asked after i sent it to stay on with more money mentioned. Turned them down without thinking about it.
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money. They deserve what they got but i hope certain people do not lose they jobs over this.
Nutshell. Wrote a very eloquent resignation letter highlighting their failings. Was asked after i sent it to stay on with more money mentioned. Turned them down without thinking about it.
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money. They deserve what they got but i hope certain people do not lose they jobs over this.
Like other Companies of this ilk, pound to a penny the top echelon of the business have done very nicely and couldn’t care less about the business or its contractors.
petop said:
I worked for Interserve for a short peiod of time last year abroad. It should of been longer but what i saw and the role being miss-sold i left.
Wrote a very eloquent resignation letter highlighting their failings. Was asked after i sent it to stay on with more money mentioned. Turned them down without thinking about it.
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money. They deserve what they got but i hope certain people do not lose they jobs over this.
As somebody who was involved in "Contract Managing" themWrote a very eloquent resignation letter highlighting their failings. Was asked after i sent it to stay on with more money mentioned. Turned them down without thinking about it.
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money. They deserve what they got but i hope certain people do not lose they jobs over this.
(a) We never wanted to outsource to them in the first place. It was a decision imposed on us by Central Govt.
(b) It was like trying to nail jelly to the wall. The costs that we were supposed to save by outsourcing were duplicated - not only did we have to pay Interserve for a shoddy 3rd class service, we also had to hire a Contract manager to try and flipping manage the relationship.
There is a mentality that the Private Sector is always more efficient. It really isn't the case.
Countdown said:
As somebody who was involved in "Contract Managing" them
(a) We never wanted to outsource to them in the first place. It was a decision imposed on us by Central Govt.
(b) It was like trying to nail jelly to the wall. The costs that we were supposed to save by outsourcing were duplicated - not only did we have to pay Interserve for a shoddy 3rd class service, we also had to hire a Contract manager to try and flipping manage the relationship.
(b) is why I cringe whenever I hear someone say "just move it all to the Cloud and save money"... Because like outsourcing it doesn't always work like that way. I've known outsourcing *cough*Softlayer*cough* that wouldn't even give us a direct support line, we had to lodge tickets and wait for a response when a critical server was down.(a) We never wanted to outsource to them in the first place. It was a decision imposed on us by Central Govt.
(b) It was like trying to nail jelly to the wall. The costs that we were supposed to save by outsourcing were duplicated - not only did we have to pay Interserve for a shoddy 3rd class service, we also had to hire a Contract manager to try and flipping manage the relationship.
Cloud is going to become a cycle of management f
kery like any other form of outsourcing, outsource to save you money... insource because outsourcing costs too much and you're losing customers due to crappy service... Rinse and repeat.Countdown said:
There is a mentality that the Private Sector is always more efficient. It really isn't the case.
This. Having worked in both public and private sector, there are just as many idiots, jobsworths and bureaucracy in both. These are inherent to any organisation that grows large enough and wont get noticed until something critical is wrong (in the private sector this is going into administration, in the public sector this is when the govt changes).Countdown said:
petop said:
I worked for Interserve for a short peiod of time last year abroad. It should of been longer but what i saw and the role being miss-sold i left.
Wrote a very eloquent resignation letter highlighting their failings. Was asked after i sent it to stay on with more money mentioned. Turned them down without thinking about it.
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money. They deserve what they got but i hope certain people do not lose they jobs over this.
As somebody who was involved in "Contract Managing" themWrote a very eloquent resignation letter highlighting their failings. Was asked after i sent it to stay on with more money mentioned. Turned them down without thinking about it.
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money. They deserve what they got but i hope certain people do not lose they jobs over this.
(a) We never wanted to outsource to them in the first place. It was a decision imposed on us by Central Govt.
(b) It was like trying to nail jelly to the wall. The costs that we were supposed to save by outsourcing were duplicated - not only did we have to pay Interserve for a shoddy 3rd class service, we also had to hire a Contract manager to try and flipping manage the relationship.
There is a mentality that the Private Sector is always more efficient. It really isn't the case.
Infra work is required. Interserve notify Client. Interserve either tender it out or do it themselves (this is why they think they are engineers when in fact they are just Facilities Management). Equipment/spares ordered with as usual Interserve ordering way more than they need. Equipment/Stores arrive and are paid for by Client BUT not all are used (these are pretty expensive bits of kit). Unused equipment is put into stores.
Years later more work is needed. Same sort of work as before. Tender, bid, won, spares ordered......but wait, dont bother to see if you could use the unused ones from before. No, just get another load with yet more excess ordering and now we are running out of storage because of all this wastage!! But as long as Interserve are adding their "admin charge" then everything is good. Well that charge was not paying adequate wages!!!
petop said:
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money.
Standard isnt it.Same as with Carillion obviously as a recent one to the wall.
Same job going on with the rail franchises that keep failing.
Same with the companies managing student halls of residence.
Same I am sure with a lot of the sub-contracted medical work.
Reasonably sharp businesses, running ring round people that dont really care or dont know better, making themselves very risk before running away when the house of cards falls down.
A load of the customers get burnt, but the bean counters still like sub-ing it out to the cheapest bid, so it happens again next time.
Daniel
Countdown said:
petop said:
I worked for Interserve for a short peiod of time last year abroad. It should of been longer but what i saw and the role being miss-sold i left.
Wrote a very eloquent resignation letter highlighting their failings. Was asked after i sent it to stay on with more money mentioned. Turned them down without thinking about it.
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money. They deserve what they got but i hope certain people do not lose they jobs over this.
As somebody who was involved in "Contract Managing" themWrote a very eloquent resignation letter highlighting their failings. Was asked after i sent it to stay on with more money mentioned. Turned them down without thinking about it.
They got away with it because the contract client let them. No proper contract management and hemorrhaging clients money. They deserve what they got but i hope certain people do not lose they jobs over this.
(a) We never wanted to outsource to them in the first place. It was a decision imposed on us by Central Govt.
(b) It was like trying to nail jelly to the wall. The costs that we were supposed to save by outsourcing were duplicated - not only did we have to pay Interserve for a shoddy 3rd class service, we also had to hire a Contract manager to try and flipping manage the relationship.
There is a mentality that the Private Sector is always more efficient. It really isn't the case.
Countdown said:
As somebody who was involved in "Contract Managing" them
(a) We never wanted to outsource to them in the first place. It was a decision imposed on us by Central Govt.
(b) It was like trying to nail jelly to the wall. The costs that we were supposed to save by outsourcing were duplicated - not only did we have to pay Interserve for a shoddy 3rd class service, we also had to hire a Contract manager to try and flipping manage the relationship.
There is a mentality that the Private Sector is always more efficient. It really isn't the case.
Having spent my career running a contract business I couldn't agree more. We had a public sector team that supplied (under duress) to Interserve, Capita and Serco, I was always struck by just how much more the taxpayer was forking out because of these charlatans and how poor the service levels are. (a) We never wanted to outsource to them in the first place. It was a decision imposed on us by Central Govt.
(b) It was like trying to nail jelly to the wall. The costs that we were supposed to save by outsourcing were duplicated - not only did we have to pay Interserve for a shoddy 3rd class service, we also had to hire a Contract manager to try and flipping manage the relationship.
There is a mentality that the Private Sector is always more efficient. It really isn't the case.
A lot of these companies operate like a big Ponzi scheme, as long as the next contract is secured to bank role the previous ones the company keeps ticking over. If one of these contracts goes south they are in the st.
The company I work for at the moment (building contractor) is at risk of going the same way at the moment, a load of sub-contractors pulling off site as they’ve not been paid.
t.The company I work for at the moment (building contractor) is at risk of going the same way at the moment, a load of sub-contractors pulling off site as they’ve not been paid.
On the construction side, that particular arm of Interserve were pretty professional and - having carried out a number of reinforced concrete packages for them over the years - never had any major operational or commercial issues.
It sounds like (as with Carillion) the problems started when branching into Facilities Management which, over the years, has been undertaken by specialist FM companies that do nothing else. Historically, both Interserve and Carillion were large main contractors carrying out substantial (and in many cases, prestigious) civil engineering and building projects under the names R.M. Douglas and Tarmac respectively.
As far as I know, other major players in the industry such as Costain, Balfour Beatty, Kier, Nuttall (now trading as BAM Construct) don't touch FM and all appear to be in sound health.
It sounds like (as with Carillion) the problems started when branching into Facilities Management which, over the years, has been undertaken by specialist FM companies that do nothing else. Historically, both Interserve and Carillion were large main contractors carrying out substantial (and in many cases, prestigious) civil engineering and building projects under the names R.M. Douglas and Tarmac respectively.
As far as I know, other major players in the industry such as Costain, Balfour Beatty, Kier, Nuttall (now trading as BAM Construct) don't touch FM and all appear to be in sound health.
cherryowen said:
On the construction side, that particular arm of Interserve were pretty professional and - having carried out a number of reinforced concrete packages for them over the years - never had any major operational or commercial issues.
It sounds like (as with Carillion) the problems started when branching into Facilities Management which, over the years, has been undertaken by specialist FM companies that do nothing else. Historically, both Interserve and Carillion were large main contractors carrying out substantial (and in many cases, prestigious) civil engineering and building projects under the names R.M. Douglas and Tarmac respectively.
As far as I know, other major players in the industry such as Costain, Balfour Beatty, Kier, Nuttall (now trading as BAM Construct) don't touch FM and all appear to be in sound health.
Nail on head. FM is fine but in the case of Interserve the area i was involved in they were out of their depth. It sounds like (as with Carillion) the problems started when branching into Facilities Management which, over the years, has been undertaken by specialist FM companies that do nothing else. Historically, both Interserve and Carillion were large main contractors carrying out substantial (and in many cases, prestigious) civil engineering and building projects under the names R.M. Douglas and Tarmac respectively.
As far as I know, other major players in the industry such as Costain, Balfour Beatty, Kier, Nuttall (now trading as BAM Construct) don't touch FM and all appear to be in sound health.
cherryowen said:
......As far as I know, other major players in the industry such as Costain, Balfour Beatty, Kier, Nuttall (now trading as BAM Construct) don't touch FM and all appear to be in sound health.
Kier are a major player in Facilities and are not in a great place, carrying a huge level of debt and needed a recent rights issue to address their finances just before Christmas. BB were in a similar place 4/5 years ago (they considered a merger with Carillion 
) but have since been chosen to be more selective with their client portfolio, size and type of projects pursued and tendering work at sensible margins. Which has turned the company around.darren f said:
cherryowen said:
......As far as I know, other major players in the industry such as Costain, Balfour Beatty, Kier, Nuttall (now trading as BAM Construct) don't touch FM and all appear to be in sound health.
Kier are a major player in Facilities and are not in a great place, carrying a huge level of debt and needed a recent rights issue to address their finances just before Christmas. BB were in a similar place 4/5 years ago (they considered a merger with Carillion ) but have since been chosen to be more selective with their client portfolio, size and type of projects pursued and tendering work at sensible margins. Which has turned the company around.I didn't know that
Interserve used to be Tilbury Douglas Construction, before that R M Douglas, and were a really first class construction company, with outstanding staff. They rebranded as Interserve because the stock market rated facility management companies higher than construction companies, and got increasingly into facility management as easier money.
I suspect a new ‘bright’ director or management team thought this was a great idea. I thought that I was seeing the end of what I thought was the best building operation in Britain. So it has proved.
What happens with companies like Carillion, and I suspect Interserve, is that they expand by debt fuelled acquisition and schmoozing or lets be frank bribing politicians to get in the frame for large scale public outsourcing contracts where plenty of money is available and poor service (and not everything Interserve did was bad) does not matter too much if you have the right contacts. What matters to the managers of a business like that is the scale of the operation, not its profitability. Then of course, they can always go to their political connections and say, we have got 65,000 people employed in the UK you will need to pull some strings to get us work or their jobs are at risk.
The whole operation gradually becomes a huge house of cards with highly paid directors, until a shock brings it all down. In Interserve’s case the shock was the Polmadie Waste Treatment Plant where they took a risk too many. The key process supplier let them down, but they had taken on the overall responsibility for handing over a turnkey plant. I do not believe that the guys within Interserve did not understand the risk they were taking. I believe they took it because they had to win the job.
Anybody who says outsourcing is good or bad in principle is being naive. The public sector is intrinsically financially inefficient not because they are bad or stupid people, but for two reasons. One, it is not their money. Their financial targets are set academically. In the end it does not really matter how much is spent. For the right purpose, NHS or a war or Brexit bribery for example, the taxpayer will always cough up more. In a Corbyn style administration it gets even worse because to a large proportion of employees their jobs become the purpose of the exercise. Two, everything they do is primarily driven by politics, and politicians are the real criminals here.
The private sector on the other hand is out to make money for themselves, not unlike the people at the top of Government financed quangoes or the politicians themselves. The quality of service they deliver is a very secondary consideration, and where you get a situation where the public and private sectors get mixed up as they did under the Tories then Blair/Brown, there is huge money to be made not only by taking on public sector facility management, but by public sector organisations who can spin off supposedly ‘arm’s length’ enterprises which somehow win an inordinate number of tenders from their parent organisations. Private companies spun out of publicly funded University research are no different. The real winners of course are the directors of the enterprise, who have generally come from the public sector organisation which set it up in the first place. At its most basic this is a simple scam on public money. Thatcher on the other hand brought in private sector managers to run public sector operations. Is it a surprise if in some cases the first thing they did was to loot the place for their own gain?
Add to that the whole over the top elfin safety and inspection industry carry on (while totally accepting that a sensible health and safety regime particularly in construction is vital) and you have a recipe for seriously unproductive money making. When the whole country becomes a house of cards the shock could be Brexit (good or bad) and we get a rerun of 2008. Maybe later this year, maybe next, I don’t pretend to know exactly when.
In the end though, if I had a specific task to achieve for a given budget I would probably pick a carefully chosen private enterprise every time. Read about the R101. Civil servants are utterly incapable of running a business. They have other priorities. Likewise the military. Send the Army in? Let’s not go there, it would be another Somme.
Incidentally I thought that Interserve still had a profitable construction arm in the Middle East.
I suspect a new ‘bright’ director or management team thought this was a great idea. I thought that I was seeing the end of what I thought was the best building operation in Britain. So it has proved.
What happens with companies like Carillion, and I suspect Interserve, is that they expand by debt fuelled acquisition and schmoozing or lets be frank bribing politicians to get in the frame for large scale public outsourcing contracts where plenty of money is available and poor service (and not everything Interserve did was bad) does not matter too much if you have the right contacts. What matters to the managers of a business like that is the scale of the operation, not its profitability. Then of course, they can always go to their political connections and say, we have got 65,000 people employed in the UK you will need to pull some strings to get us work or their jobs are at risk.
The whole operation gradually becomes a huge house of cards with highly paid directors, until a shock brings it all down. In Interserve’s case the shock was the Polmadie Waste Treatment Plant where they took a risk too many. The key process supplier let them down, but they had taken on the overall responsibility for handing over a turnkey plant. I do not believe that the guys within Interserve did not understand the risk they were taking. I believe they took it because they had to win the job.
Anybody who says outsourcing is good or bad in principle is being naive. The public sector is intrinsically financially inefficient not because they are bad or stupid people, but for two reasons. One, it is not their money. Their financial targets are set academically. In the end it does not really matter how much is spent. For the right purpose, NHS or a war or Brexit bribery for example, the taxpayer will always cough up more. In a Corbyn style administration it gets even worse because to a large proportion of employees their jobs become the purpose of the exercise. Two, everything they do is primarily driven by politics, and politicians are the real criminals here.
The private sector on the other hand is out to make money for themselves, not unlike the people at the top of Government financed quangoes or the politicians themselves. The quality of service they deliver is a very secondary consideration, and where you get a situation where the public and private sectors get mixed up as they did under the Tories then Blair/Brown, there is huge money to be made not only by taking on public sector facility management, but by public sector organisations who can spin off supposedly ‘arm’s length’ enterprises which somehow win an inordinate number of tenders from their parent organisations. Private companies spun out of publicly funded University research are no different. The real winners of course are the directors of the enterprise, who have generally come from the public sector organisation which set it up in the first place. At its most basic this is a simple scam on public money. Thatcher on the other hand brought in private sector managers to run public sector operations. Is it a surprise if in some cases the first thing they did was to loot the place for their own gain?
Add to that the whole over the top elfin safety and inspection industry carry on (while totally accepting that a sensible health and safety regime particularly in construction is vital) and you have a recipe for seriously unproductive money making. When the whole country becomes a house of cards the shock could be Brexit (good or bad) and we get a rerun of 2008. Maybe later this year, maybe next, I don’t pretend to know exactly when.
In the end though, if I had a specific task to achieve for a given budget I would probably pick a carefully chosen private enterprise every time. Read about the R101. Civil servants are utterly incapable of running a business. They have other priorities. Likewise the military. Send the Army in? Let’s not go there, it would be another Somme.
Incidentally I thought that Interserve still had a profitable construction arm in the Middle East.
Edited by cardigankid on Saturday 16th March 08:57
Edited by cardigankid on Saturday 16th March 09:59
On first appearance it looks strange that the shareholders still had 5% of their value but voted against the restructure which put the company into Administration leaving the shareholders with nothing.
If you dig deeper, what actually happened was one the major U.S. shareholders (hedge fund C.A.M.), wanted to do a deal whereby they get something like 30% more share and make loans secured against the high value assets.
The CFO said no way, he saw through this. That U.S. hedge fund could have then called on its loans, bankrupt the company and make off with the assets secured against it's loan. It was trying to cut its losses and squeeze more money out at the cost of the everyone else - typical vulture.
C.A.M. said they would vote against the restructure deal to force the CFOs hand. It looks like he made the right choice in the end.
If you dig deeper, what actually happened was one the major U.S. shareholders (hedge fund C.A.M.), wanted to do a deal whereby they get something like 30% more share and make loans secured against the high value assets.
The CFO said no way, he saw through this. That U.S. hedge fund could have then called on its loans, bankrupt the company and make off with the assets secured against it's loan. It was trying to cut its losses and squeeze more money out at the cost of the everyone else - typical vulture.
C.A.M. said they would vote against the restructure deal to force the CFOs hand. It looks like he made the right choice in the end.
petop said:
cherryowen said:
On the construction side, that particular arm of Interserve were pretty professional and - having carried out a number of reinforced concrete packages for them over the years - never had any major operational or commercial issues.
It sounds like (as with Carillion) the problems started when branching into Facilities Management which, over the years, has been undertaken by specialist FM companies that do nothing else. Historically, both Interserve and Carillion were large main contractors carrying out substantial (and in many cases, prestigious) civil engineering and building projects under the names R.M. Douglas and Tarmac respectively.
As far as I know, other major players in the industry such as Costain, Balfour Beatty, Kier, Nuttall (now trading as BAM Construct) don't touch FM and all appear to be in sound health.
Nail on head. FM is fine but in the case of Interserve the area i was involved in they were out of their depth. It sounds like (as with Carillion) the problems started when branching into Facilities Management which, over the years, has been undertaken by specialist FM companies that do nothing else. Historically, both Interserve and Carillion were large main contractors carrying out substantial (and in many cases, prestigious) civil engineering and building projects under the names R.M. Douglas and Tarmac respectively.
As far as I know, other major players in the industry such as Costain, Balfour Beatty, Kier, Nuttall (now trading as BAM Construct) don't touch FM and all appear to be in sound health.
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