Remploy Building Products has transformed itself into a business that is more than the sum of its parts.

With a new management team, expanded operations, and a fresh approach, the company is no longer a manufacturer - but a crucial partner.

Remploy Building Products has spent the last year transforming itself not merely to keep pace with the market - but to stride ahead and clear the pack and with the new General Manager Lucy Holl at the helm Remploy is well positioned to continue its ambitious growth plans.

During the last year the company has enjoyed record growth, with a 61 per cent year on year increase in productivity and a 47 per cent growth in revenue. As it stands to date, Remploy Building Products’ Oldham factory is producing 1,000 uPVC windows a week and the business has a turnover of around £8 million.

Investment in its manufacturing facilities, covering both jobs and plant, has strengthened its capabilities, but the real engine of Remploy’s rising fortunes were the transformations it has brought to both recreate and reposition itself. The company has very much stepped out from behind the scenes to stand alongside its peers in the social housing market and operate under its own banner.

“Over the last 12 months, we have improved our manufacturing techniques, invested in supply chain management and focused hard on delivering excellent customer satisfaction to both customers and tenants” says Holl.

That means listening to the clients’ requirements and tailoring its services accordingly. This kind of bespoke flexibility is part and parcel of the strategy that has seen Remploy become a major player in Manchester’s complex housing landscape. And not just as a manufacturer/supplier but as an installation partner too - with all of the responsibilities that this role entails. The upshot is that Remploy is now a partnering operator in its own right, and is located at the heart of Manchester’s key partnerships. The company is among the largest suppliers of windows to the Impact Manchester framework, for instance, working closely with the Lord Group, G& J Seddon and Wates Living Space, and so it played a strong part in securing Impact the Partnering Scheme of the Year Awards in May’s Housing Excellence Awards.

Along with this, the company works with Northwards Housing and Southways Housing, two of the major RSLs in the city, on their refurbishment process, as well as G&J Seddon and a host of procurement bodies, such as GM Procure, Fusion 21 and more. It also maintains strong links with Bowater Windows and Doors, which supplies it with the WHS Halo profile from which it manufactures its windows. But Remploy’s role doesn’t end when the windows roll off the production line and are shipped to site.

“About half of our product is produced on a supply and fit regime. We’ve developed and strengthened the contract management to have a single point of contact on contract administration, and with the tenant - we get involved very strongly with the tenants,” added Holl.

The process of keeping the tenants informed and involved starts early with open days, where Remploy introduces its liaison staff and explains the process that will see their homes upgraded with new windows and doors. The process continues with the company’s liaison officers taking a hand in the process of tenants’ choices for the home improvements and the aftercare support of ensuring the work is completed satisfactorily and gathering the feedback that will feed into the KPIs needed to effectively monitor and continuously improve services.

“We have a team now that is very focused on involving the tenants,” Holl said. “When that element of the job is done, we then pass it on to the contract managers who visit the site on a daily basis to check on the product and how it is fitted with our fitting team, check that there are no snags outstanding, and that we’ve got the property opened and closed in the minimum time possible.”

All part and parcel of ensuring that the tenants are satisfied with a job well done, and with high levels of satisfied tenants, of course, so it comes to satisfied partners - and more work as a rich reward for a job done well. Clearly, Remploy is doing it right, since its partners and clients keep coming back for more.

There’s more to Remploy Building Products than Manchester, of course. Throughout 2007 and into this year, it has also maintained a strong presence across the country. It has worked on a diverse range of schemes with clients such as Sheffield Homes, Colchester Homes, First Choice Homes, Golden Gate Housing, Orbit Housing, Bradford City Council, Valley To Coast Housing, Sentinel Housing, Anchor Trust, Northern Counties, John Groomes Housing and Yorkshire Housing.

Remploy Building Products obviously gets about a bit, but it is not all borne on the shoulders of the Oldham site’s operatives, for the company maintains a second site in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, which supports and sustains the organisation’s reach.

That reach is not yet fully extended either, for the company’s growth plans are far from fulfilled. Later this year, it is planning a further investment of £250,000 in its manufacturing facilities as well increasing its staffing levels. The process of change and improvement is far from over. The goal is naturally to win ever more work and push the output of the Oldham factory from 1,000 units per week up to 1,500 over the next couple of years or so.

Mobilising change throughout the business has been part of this process, and brought the consequent rewards of its willingness to embrace change, but it is also looking to the future to ensure it can continue to deliver hard results and remain top of the game.

Remploy remains ambitious with its growth plans and is competing hard in what is an increasingly competitive commercial environment.

Equally, it delivers the blow to any lingering notions that assisted employment for people with disabilities somehow means second best - far from it as Remploy’s achievements testify.

The final part of Remploy’s transformative process is the new members of the management team, tasked with ensuring the company retains its sharp leading edge. Lucy Holl, of course, is one of those new taskmasters set to steer the company’s forward path.
Alongside her is Paul Boughey, Commercial Operations Manager, and together they will be looking to drive Remploy Building Products forward to the future.

“Remploy Building Products is one of the leading suppliers of solutions into windows schemes. People deal with us because we can deliver and we are here to build on that success,” Holl said. “We’re no longer part of the pack!”