Getting to know you

The buy and build strategy that created the Kinetics Group delivered a national company dedicated to social housing, but a legacy of that approach was that many clients are unaware of the comprehensive range of its asset management services. So, embarking on the next stage of its development, Kinetics is setting out to fully introduce itself

There’s more to the Kinetics group than meets the eye; even many of its clients aren’t quite aware of the company’s full capabilities, but all that is set to change as the social housing specialist embarks on a full round of introductions.

The intention is to give the social housing sector – clients as well as potential new clients – the chance to really get to know the Kinetics group, rather than just one or two of the company’s facets, so that they can gain an all-round understanding of what this specialised provider of asset management services can do.

Many people in the north of England recognise it as a successful planned maintenance company, for example, whilst not being aware that it is equally adept at responsive repairs, whereas in the south that perception has a tendency to be reversed. by the same measure, others might be familiar with Kinetics in terms of delivering gas and electrical services without fully understanding the other services in its portfolio. indeed, some £50 million of the company’s £130 million turnover is derived from its gas and electrical compliance work.

“A lot of people don’t realise that,” said martin stone, the company’s pre-construction director. “we are one of the largest gas compliance companies in the country, if you take that in isolation. Kinetics encompasses everything from an asset management capability; from responsive repairs, planned maintenance, gas and electrical compliance, renewable energy, and fitting the whole lot into one company, but a lot of people aren’t aware of all that because Kinetics has been developed over the last three years.”

In part, the ‘awareness gap’ stone alludes to is an inevitable aspect of the Kinetics group’s relatively recent arrival on the national – and in some ways the local – scene working with social housing providers. but this bold newcomer is also very much an old hand in the business, which rather leads into the second reason why the company recognises its need to reveal those hidden depths. it all reflects the Kinetics group’s origins as a collection of local and regional based smes and its subsequent evolution into the singular entity it is today.

“The histories of the companies acquired under the buy and build strategy go back as much as 75 years, but Kinetics itself has only been around a short time, so it has grown very quickly and to the outside world it has almost appeared as if from nowhere,” stone added.

The companies that formed the ‘building blocks’ of Kinetics were specialised in a range of services – be that planned maintenance, or gas work, mechanical and electrical, or responsive repairs for example – working with the social housing sector in their locality. many of these family firms were old hands, with histories stretching back as far as the 1930s, and turnovers ranging from £5 million to £15 million. each one was a healthy business and a going concern but had reached its natural limits as a family business.

That’s where Kinetics came in with its ‘buy and build’ strategy of targeted acquisitions. It was an unusual model; the familiar framework is of an existing company buying and bolting on its acquisitions to a pre-existing operational structure, but in this case the company was built from scratch around a ‘small core’ formed specifically for the purpose of creating a multi-skilled asset management provider tailored to the needs of social housing.

The small core was established in 2006, led by chief executive Chris Cheshire and his executive team, with the backing of venture capitalist Sovereign Capital. Derived for the most part from a social housing background, they know the industry’s needs from the inside out. During a roughly two year period, Kinetics acquired 11 businesses, ranging from construction companies, heating specialists, mechanical and electrical businesses and more.

The challenge was then to integrate these former businesses into the one company under the one brand that is Kinetics – but without losing those essential qualities of the locally-focused family firms they had once been. A difficult process, but one that proved rewarding for all involved in the process.

For a while, the acquired companies traded under their own names, but under the Kinetics banner, building on their already strong links with clients, but gaining the platform and the support to extend their reach from trading locally to being able to offer their services countrywide. The aim, however, was always to integrate them under the one brand and consolidate them into one company. That process was completed in early 2009, so one can no longer quite talk about the summation of its parts, but those formative companies remain in spirit, as it were, within the Kinetics Group’s ethos of national capability built on local delivery, with the emphasis on partnership and quality.

Today, having completed its formation and consolidation, the Kinetics Group consists of four business units – planned maintenance, responsive repairs, compliance, and environmental – represented by the four symbols over the Kinetics name. The task now is to implant the full meaning of that symbology into the social housing sector’s collective consciousness.

“We want to make sure that people actually begin to recognise those symbols with the realisation that we can link those areas together. Our intention is to promote this to our existing clients and then move out into the marketplace to say what we are capable of doing. We are one of the very few companies that can knit all of these areas together,” Stone said.

“Although we are new and it seems that we’ve suddenly appeared on the market, people shouldn’t be frightened by that, because Kinetics is a vehicle that’s been built specifically for the social housing market.” Historically, clients have known Kinetics by the people and the service specialism each of those original businesses conducted; now clients are to be encouraged to look beyond that to see the whole team capability together, rather than in isolation. In a sense, it’s about helping clients to ‘join the dots’ as it were and see the entire picture.

Stone, and his colleagues on the executive team will be at Harrogate this year for the CIH ’s annual conference and exhibition, pushing this message, and ensuring that people have the opportunity to really get to know the business. The company isn’t exhibiting – it plans to make its exhibition debut at the CIH SE event in Brighton next year – but it is sponsoring the housing forum lunch on the 23 June.

By the time that Kinetics completes this new awareness raising phase of its development, then clients will finally know the company in intimate detail, and realise that its services – all of them – are deliverable nationwide.

So, meet Kinetics. The company is eager to demonstrate what it can do for the industry – and for tenants.