Contractors turn consultant to add value

Two former major contracting bosses who joined forces to help companies find a better way to run their businesses are finding their skills are increasingly in demand as the industry comes out of recession.

Tim Fitch was business development director at Taylor Woodrow Construction and Brendan Morahan was managing director of the Taywood infrastructure division and then in its new guise as Vinci Civil Engineering following a take over.  In 2011 they set up Invennt, a business that offers management consultancy advice with a contracting edge.

“We are selling what we have learned from our experiences,” Fitch says and our aim is to “create value through construction”.

That value is for everyone involved in the construction process. Invennt can advise clients looking to extract best value from their supply chains but in a way that attracts quality organisations to continue working with them. And it can help suppliers wondering whether to tie themselves into a collaboration deal or ignore the offer all together.

“There are big consultancies doing this sort of work but in a more theoretical way and they don’t have the context,” Morahan says.

“We are selling what we have learned from our experiences” 

Advice offered by Invennt falls into three main categories – strategic business planning, strategic business development and operational improvements. “At its best our industry is brilliant but the rump drags it down,” says Morahan. “I want to raise sights from simply improving margins by suppressing other people’s to genuinely increasing value for all.”

Current Invennt clients include blue chip infrastructure commissioning authorities, main contractors, manufacturers and suppliers from tier ones, twos and threes to small businesses looking to better themselves.

The company’s style is direct. “We don’t sit on the fence and present alternatives,” Fitch says. We tell it like it is and offer a value view. Sometimes we are telling people what they don’t want to hear but we have to be able to be honest, it is the way we are. Some people might think that is a surprising business model but we are getting results and more clients all the time.”

You can read more about Invennt at http://www.invennt.com/