2023 – Our 60th year in review

As we approach the end of 2023, we’ve had a look back at our most successful year in our 60 year history.

With Covid, lockdowns and furlough becoming a distant memory, the year kicked off with the appointment of the £7m Mechanical package on Watkin Jones Group’s largest Build to Rent scheme to date in Sherlock Street, Birmingham – known as Makers Yard. The scheme features six blocks, including a 30-storey tower plus lower buildings ranging from 5 to 13 storeys, includes 551 apartments of one, two and three bedrooms.

We continued to invest heavily in Apprenticeships and saw seven new apprentice starters join the company in roles created around the UK and based at our head office. Grace Roberts, an apprentice from 2021 completed her HNC in Building Services Engineering and became Kimpton’s first female engineer. Grace has already been joined by Oksana who joined the electrical engineering team too.

Our Decarbonisation team had a great boost with the appointment by Mitie on behalf of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust to complete a £2.8m decarbonisation project across their Liverpool Estate, with the biggest project being at Rathbone Hospital in Old Swan. They also completed decarbonisation work at the world famous Liver Building and boiler replacements across the Daresbury Lab site.

The team also delivered a number of major commercial solar PV projects. New installs in Ellesmere Port for Hitex, The Genesis Centre in Stoke and a huge extension to our own Solar PV provision topped off a great year in the growth of our commercial solar PV business.

One of the real highlights of the year was Eurovision. Having mobilised on the ACC Liverpool FM contract in January, it was full steam ahead to prepare the site for the world’s biggest musical extravaganza and a million additional bespangled visitors to our city. With the work completed, it was great to see the people of Liverpool pull together to welcome visitors from around the world to experience the city at its very, very best. At the end of a week of celebration and partying, it truly was a proud moment to have been part of the team that made it such a success.

Our Social Value efforts delivered support to a wide range of charities throughout the year and we forged ever closer relationships with schools, colleges and charities across the region, delivering nearly 100 hours of direct student engagement with talks, workshops and interactive sessions explaining to students the opportunities of a career in Engineering. After all, no-one is getting to NetZero without Engineers.

The middle of the year was bustling with new contract wins and the £6.7m Central Quay Cardiff BTR scheme, the £4.1m full M&E contract for One Victoria, Manchester and the £4.6m mechanical services contact at Bath Junction. A real mix of quality work around the UK for the teams gave us real confidence for the back half of the year.

The Turnkey team had a great year with work across the region. The completion of the new offices for the Border and Immigration Service, the completion of the Biograd Stem Cell Laboratories and Cat A and Cat B commercial fit outs at 39 Old Hall Street and throughout the Capital Building.

The Acoustic Living Wall at the DB Cargo site in Cricklewood was completed and in a recent revisit we’re pleased to say, has settled down to be exactly as the name implies – full of birds, insects and a variety of plant life. We have created a lovely colourful and super effective acoustic wall shielding the houses nearby from stray sounds from the goods yard.

The work to install all of the M&E Services for the new high fidelity flight simulator centre at RAF Valley was completed. The £2.2M project was part of the construction of new training facilities at RAF Valley in Anglesey. These were created as part of a £175M investment in the basic flying training operation within the UK military flying training system.

Our work in the hospitality sector also went from strength to strength with appointments for PPM by Radisson Blu Liverpool and Novotel Liverpool in Paddington Village. These were joined with the contract for the replacement of the main risers at the Tower Hotel in London, having upgraded the boiler rooms in 2022. These were all added to our already extensive portfolio of clients in the sector.

As the year drew to a close we were absolutely delighted to have scooped two awards at the 2023 Liverpool Chamber Innovation in Business Awards. We were particularly pleased as the first was for Talent Development Award and the second, The overall Chairs Award! It was a wonderful recognition of how hard the whole team have worked to encourage diversity in the industry and imbed our values in everything we do.

We then delivered a Webinar for Visit Britain to their members across the UK on how they can begin the process of decarbonising their own businesses. The session went incredibly well and was well received and we were mobbed with questions both at the event and afterwards.

And then finally, on Saturday 18th November 2023, almost 60 years to the day after the business was formed, the Kimpton team and their partners celebrated together, in a spectacular black tie dinner, at Carden Park Hotel and Spa in Cheshire.

164 people, including every one of the apprentices came together to look back over some the business successes over the years, toast absent friends and share some of the plans for the future.

2024 will be an exciting one. The business has a secure order book which created significant growth in 2023 and will see growth again in 2024. We have the best people in the business leading the drive forward and ensuring our values are delivered on for our people and our customers.

Thank you to all we have worked with throughout the year and thank you to our own team for an amazing year together.

We will see you next year, but in the meantime, adios, enjoy the break and come back refreshed for 2024. It’s going to be a big one.