Concept moves to expand its empire

Midlands-based project management firm Concept is poised to quadruple both turnover and staff in an ambitious expansion bid aimed at picking up fresh PFI business.

Concept, which employs 30 staff, will take on 100 to 120 new people over the next three years, with the aim of positioning itself to attract new business resulting from the government’s Building Schools for the Future initiative.

Simon Gardiner, Concept’s business development director, said the new “fee earners” should be able to increase the firm’s current annual average turnover of £2.5m by four times.

Concept, which is headquartered in Nottingham and has satellite premises in Birmingham, will also open a third office. The exact location has yet to be decided, but Gardiner said it would be in the North of England, possibly Manchester.

The recruitment spree has begun with the appointment of PFI expert Tim Wood as managing director. Wood joins from Metronet, the organisation responsible for maintaining and upgrading two-thirds of the London Underground network as part of the Public Private Partnership. His role had been filled by an interim manager for the past 12 months.

Concept has also drafted in Chris Devereaux-Little to head up its PFI team. A former project manager for Marconi, where he worked on PFI projects, Devereaux-Little spent the past three years as an independent consultant working on projects such as Luton Parkway.

Gardiner said that although Concept’s growth would be substantial, it would be tightly focused. “We want to concentrate on project management, we have no desire to be a supermarket that offers everything."

Concept will target Local Education Partnerships, PFI schemes facilitated under Building Schools for the Future. Although the firm has no experience of this new type of scheme, it has completed a number of LIFT (local improvement finance trust) schemes, which are similarly funded projects in the health sector. These include work for primary care trusts in Greater Nottingham and South Derbyshire.

The first wave of Building Schools will see £2.2bn invested in rebuilding or improving around 200 schools this year and next. Waves two and three will see a further £2bn per year spent during 2006 to 2008.