Flying Lowe

From the soaring heights of the UK’s tallest skyscraper to the iconic sailboat structure of Dubai’s Burj Al Arab Hotel, Steve Lee has project-managed some of the best of them.

The sky is evidently not the limit, however. As managing director of family business Lowe & Oliver for the last seven years, Lee has established a thoroughly modern approach to business, doubling company turnover and overseeing some promising acquisitions on behalf of parent group Lowe Holdings.

Not bad at all for an East End geezer who began his career as a fresh-faced apprentice for Mathew Hall.

Both turnover and profit have been growing steadily since Lee’s arrival. Lowe & Oliver alone now turns over £10 million.

“The company wasn’t going anywhere before I joined. It wasn’t growing. They’d introduced a couple of other MDs before me who weren’t quite right, and then they brought me in and it’s grown considerably ever since,” he says.

“If the firm hadn’t become as strong as it now is, we wouldn’t have been able to make acquisitions. If you include these, we’ve actually gone from a £5m to a £35m business, because we bought RF Webb, which had a turnover of £9m, and a section of Hills, which turns over £16m.”

Hills are alive

Lee is keen to talk about the group’s latest purchase, Hills’ London-based City office. He is characteristically frank.

“Hills was having some great financial difficulties. We were looking at buying the whole company, but there were a couple of other groups who were interested, and eventually it was sold to Southern Electric Contracting (SEC).

“We knew that SEC didn’t really want the London business, so we bought that about a week after SEC had signed the deal.” Hills’ City office has now been renamed Hills Building Services. The business has always concentrated on commercial contracts, an area which Lowe Holdings is keen to get involved with.

“We’ve worked in London for years, but we’re not very strong on the office-based side. We felt we needed to get into that area.”

Some might argue that the purchase was somewhat imprudent, considering the foreseeable market downturn. Is Lee a risk-taker, or does he simply have the foresight to look beyond the near future?

“There is a problem, but put it this way, if we were to do it at another time, when the market was very buoyant, then perhaps we’d be paying more money for the company we bought.

“Would we like there to be an upturn in business? Of course, but we’ve considered that there’s probably going to be a downturn. We see 2008 and part of 2009 as a problem, but we foresee business building back up by the end of 2009, and hopefully that’ll be ongoing up to the Olympics.

“We didn’t do it because of what the market was telling us. Hills was available and it was a great opportunity. We know some of the people there, and I’ve worked in London for many years so I know the industry well. It all fitted.”

Lee’s ventures have certainly paid off in the past. Three years ago, Lowe Holdings purchased RF Webb. The m&e firm had a similar ethos to Lowe & Oliver.

The parallels are quite striking. Both were family-run businesses. Lowe & Oliver was set up by Reginald Lowe, father of current chairman Patrick Lowe, back in 1923. RF Webb was formed by Reginald Webb back in 1932. Both operate within a 70-mile radius of their head offices, with RF Webb boasting an impressive standing in Southampton, Lowe & Oliver in Oxford.

“Lowe & Oliver is a household name in Oxford – they’re like Hoover is to vacuum cleaners,” says Lee. “If someone says ‘electrical contractor’ down here, they think of Lowe & Oliver immediately.”

Lee is now managing director of Lowe & Oliver, RF Webb and Hills, although all three companies have independent directors who run them on a day-to-day basis.

Reputation is paramount, so integrating the three brands was never a consideration. “RF Webb, for example, is a company in its own right. It already had an extremely good name in the Southampton area and the south coast.

“It would have been foolish of us to have bought it and then changed its name to Lowe & Oliver.”

Royal appointment

Clearly marked out as the flagship company, Lowe & Oliver boasts a close relationship with Oxford University and a Royal Warrant to boot.

“We’re one of the very few contractors that holds the Royal Warrant. We gained that through the work we did at Buckingham Palace and St James’s Palace. We also worked on the tower after the Windsor Castle fire,” Lee explains.

“You don’t have to have a Royal Warrant to work in a royal household. It certainly helps, but the work does go out to tender.”

When the historic buildings specialist isn’t busy refurbishing St George’s Chapel, Windsor, or boosting its claim of having worked on every single Oxford University building, it also focuses on top-end private housing.

With a twinkle in his eye, Lee hints at having dealt with a number of prominent clients. But he’s keeping things strictly under wraps. It seems that nobody values their privacy more highly than those in the public eye.

Within the last couple of years, RF Webb has started in earnest on maintenance work.

“We’ve set up a maintenance division in Southampton. We’re building it up, particularly for the big private houses. It’s a good business opportunity. These people who’ve got £10m houses are not going to want to worry about unblocking a sink.

“The houses with bigger plant need maintaining. They have air-conditioning units and swimming pools and very complicated audio-visual systems. We’re seeing more and more of it as time goes on.”

Securing and carrying out the work is not a problem. When you deal with some of the big contractors, they’re not as good as they should be when it comes to retentions

Lee has certainly been in the business long enough to spot a trend.

Oxford bound

In 2001, he was approached by Lowe and Oliver’s chairman Patrick Lowe, who he knew through the ECA. Lowe wanted Lee to run the company for him, so he could take a back seat after a long history with the firm.

“Initially I said no, because I have dragged my family half way around the world in the past. When we returned to the UK, we settled back in Essex. My wife wasn’t happy to relocate, and there was a bit of resistance, but in the end I accepted. I now live in Yarnton, which is a village to the north-west of Oxford.”

Lee is incredibly proud of his achievements at Lowe & Oliver.

“I’ve brought the company into the 21st century. When I joined, people were rifling through information on bits of paper and it’s not the way I’m used to working. I brought operating systems in. To make the business more profitable, it had to change because other people out there were changing, such as the clients and contractors we work with.

“I don’t think Lowe & Oliver was changing with them. They were a bit stuck in their ways, and they weren’t looking out into the future. People were used to doing business like they had done 30 years ago – it was all handshakes.”

Lee has worked for a number of different companies in the past, most of which were based in London or overseas. At 50 floors high, one of his most exciting projects was the UK’s tallest habitable building.

“I was project director on what was called Drake & Scull but has now changed its name to Emcor. We did the first phase of Canary Wharf – the tower which is now called 1 Canada Square. It was quite stressful, but a great project to work on. I was project director for about £60m worth of business. I was pretty proud of that.”

Back in the 1990s, he moved to Dubai with his wife and sons to become a project manager with Balfour Kilpatrick, which won the ambitious Burj Al Arab Hotel contract. It took three and a half years to complete. Despite the glamorous lifestyle, he chose to return to the UK and take up the position of managing director at Phoenix Electrical Company, where he’d previously worked as a director.

“As an expatriate, there comes a time when you have to decide whether you’re going to live that way for the rest of your life or move back to England and carry on with your career. I came back and took up at Phoenix. It was a good life we had in Dubai, though. My wife never forgave me for it.”

So, is m&e contracting a lucrative industry for the career-driven? Lee laughs with a touch of awkwardness.

“It could be more profitable, put it that way. Its margins are always very, very tight. I think people have been saying this for years, but it’s a difficult industry to be in.”

According to Lee, the main issues are trying to win contracts without retentions and ensuring people pay the firm on time and in the correct manner.

Abolish retentions

“Securing and carrying out the work is not a problem. When you deal with some of the big contractors, they’re not as good as they should be, particularly when it comes to retentions.

“The SEC Group has been fighting to get retentions abolished for years. Getting them paid can be a nightmare. I think retentions should be abolished 100%.”

Lee’s passion for industry issues is reflected in his role as ECA regional chairman for the Central South area, a position he is holding for the second year running.

“I was dragged into the ECA when I worked for Emcor,” he jokes. “I was asked to go to a few meetings and got a little bit involved, and it really just grew from there.

“Some people say, ‘What do we get out of the ECA?’ It’s very hard to define that. You do get to hear about technical and commercial issues, and the industry networking is probably the main benefit.

“Also, particularly with bigger companies like ours, people would wonder why you were not a member. Do we get value for money out of it? I don’t know. But for how much it costs, it’s not really an issue.”

Convergence calls

One of the main issues the ECA is currently dealing with is a possible convergence with the HVCA, an idea that the majority seem in favour of.

“The next big thing is putting some meat on the bones,” says Lee. “At the moment it’s all, ‘Well we could do this and we could do that.’ The words are good, but let’s see what it really means.

“They’ll never be able to join them as one, in my opinion, unless the ECA buys out the HVCA, but I don’t think that will happen.

“The assets of the HVCA and the ECA will have to be individually ring-fenced. Remember, those assets belong to the members – and there are lots of independent electrical-only contractors who are worried about that.”

Another subject on everyone’s lips is the training of electricians in line with the release of the 17th Edition of the Wiring Regulations.

“It’s a big issue. The ECA runs courses, which we will use, but instead of sending individuals to the ECA to train, the ECA will probably put a trainer in this building. We’ll send 14 people at a time into the boardroom for three days and train them up. We’re going to start that towards the middle of the year.”

It’s evidently a busy time for Lee, but does his role at Lowe Holdings provide any perks to help keep those stress levels down?

“Rupert Lowe, Patrick’s eldest son, used to be the chairman of Southampton Football Club, which meant that we had a box there. He’s a director within our company now and we don’t have it any more, but then, if I’m truthful, I’m not a Southampton fan anyway. I’ve always been a Spurs supporter!”