Adam Stone, the Managing Director of Chichester Stoneworks, has learnt some important lessons over the past 18 months. Here he shares some of his insights on the road ahead.

Being a Director of Cathedral Works Organisation (CWO) when it went into Administration on 5 March last year has left Adam Stone philosophical now he is the Managing Director of Chichester Stoneworks, which operates from the same Terminus Road premises as CWO with the same machinery and some of the same people – although fewer of them.

“It was a stressful experience,” he tells NSS. “The whole team fought right until the end to save CWO. There were a couple of comments from suppliers about just changing the name and re-opening. If it was that easy people would be doing it all the time.”

He understands the resentment some people feel and is humbled by the faith that many have shown in the new company. “It restores your faith in people, the sort of support we got,” says Adam, who admits that without that continuing support it would not have been possible to get Chichester Stoneworks off the ground.

“Throughout my career I have fostered relationships with people in the industry. If you have a relationship with someone you generally get a better service. There’s been a lot of support for Chichester Stoneworks but people are understandably cautious and there has had to be a certain amount of rebuilding of relationships.”

The closure of CWO and the creation of Chichester Stoneworks have taught Adam and his senior managers some lessons.

The shareholders in the new company with Adam are John Rye, who was Contracts Manager with CWO, and Julie Neil, the accountant. They also have sage business advice on tap from the consultants who helped set up the new business and give a non-nonsense, honest view of it. “I think it’s important to have an honest view of where the company’s going,” says Adam. “It’s very easy to justify not seeing the truth.

“I think most business mistakes are misguided. I don’t think there are a great deal of malicious decisions made in business, but you don’t always face up to realities – someone wanting to knock your valuation; a project not performing as well as it should. You have to be prepared to accept bad news graciously. If you don’t and you shoot the messenger every time, you will never hear bad news.”

Adam says that everyone in Chichester Stoneworks is encouraged to come forward with any thoughts they have about the business. He meets regularly with his line managers – Bartosz Baran, who has been promoted to yard foreman, Bradley Thwaites, the masonry foreman, and Steve Langton the yard manager. The aim is to nip any problems in the bud.

A priority currently is to replace the water treatment plant because the water circulating in the factory is cream, not clean. Just removing most of the water from the waste that has to be disposed of is expected to save £15-20,000 a year. Tools and machines should last longer as well, the finish on the stone will be better and the factory will be drier and cleaner, which is good for health & safety.

What happened to CWO has led Adam to reassess some of his ideas, notably the antipathy he once had towards new methods of working stone, such as using robots for carving. It might sadden him to have to accept it, but he can see some skill sets have to move from the chisel to the computer if masonry companies such as Chichester Stoneworks are to compete and survive.

His appreciation of robots was a lesson learnt the hard way. He thought masons could outperform a robot and quoted for a hand-carved coat of arms at a price lower than a company was quoting for the work by a robot. It was a contract he lost money on.

He still believes the jury is out on whether or not it is advantageous to use a robot for everyday masonry – a simple crocket on a church steeple, for example – especially when there is no masonry left to scan for replacement work. But he can see the benefits of robots on more detailed carving and thinks the price advantage could lead more people to commission stone carvings.

One of the projects that got Chichester Stoneworks off the ground was the carving of four lions, each weighing 12 tonnes, for a sculpture that will shortly be unveiled, no doubt to great acclaim, but until then has to remain confidential.

They are copies of lions by Canova on the tomb of Pope Clement XIII in St Peter’s in Rome. They were scanned by laser, although as they were not intended to be viewed in the round, they had flat backs. As the new sculptures will be seen all round, the details had to be filled in. That design work was carried out on a computer using the laser scans, with the digital information being fed into the robot at Stone World, Oxford.

It took two months to refine the design and fill in the missing detail, with the architect and Adam both involved. The lions’ manes and fur required particular attention.

The original lions are carved from a single block of marble, but these replicas have been scaled up to be 50% larger than the originals and each one is carved from five blocks of Massangis limestone from France.

Once the robot had done its work, the stones were transported to Chichester Stoneworks’ premises where three of the company’s carvers have spent two months finishing the lions to give them the life and vibrancy that hand work can achieve.

The sculpture has still taken a long time to produce, but less than if the whole project had been carried out by hand and at half the cost.

Adam does not necessarily see Chichester Stoneworks having its own robot – at least, not for some time – but sees no reason why it should not buy in the services of other companies. It has already also used the waterjet cutting and digital templating services of Louis Livramento’s company, Livra, in London.

“I used to say there were too many robots in the country but now I see the future of traditional masonry in a different way,” says Adam. “Technology will impact on the way we do things. Whether it’s better or not, it’s the way of the world. You have to be honest about it – if it’s no longer working, stop doing it.”

The other major project that brought Chichester Stoneworks into viable existence was the supply of £1.3million worth of Richmont limestone cladding for a large house near Basingstoke. There were also smaller projects from a number of clients who transferred their allegiance from CWO – a £130,000 hard landscaping scheme, a couple of cantilevered staircases, a £40,000 bridge repair, £80,000 repairs to a church in Ealing. Some were worth no more than £500.

Adam accepts responsibility for some of the problems that led to the collapse of CWO. It was he who scheduled the restoration work on the renovation of the Quadrangle at Buckingham Palace during the long, cold winter of 2010-11. The project won top honours in the Repair & Restoration category of the 2012 Natural Stone Awards, but it was an expensive consolation.

“The architect told me I hadn’t made any allowance for bad weather. I said we hadn’t lost a week to bad weather for years. Then everything froze solid.”

Another problem CWO had was that when the economy hit the credit crunch in 2007/8 the company employed 120 people in separate departments for jobs such as facade cleaning, stone fixing and banker masonry. Work was taken on too cheaply just to keep departments busy, which sent the company in directions it did not necessarily want to go.

Chichester Stoneworks now directly employs 17 people, including Adam, and they multi-task. When extra hands are needed the company sub-contracts, often to former team-mates.

Adam maintains that the nucleus of the new company must be the skill set built up over years in the workshops in Terminus Road. Although it was the physical assets that were bought from the Administrator, far more important to him was the preservation of that team of people.

“I think most people agree CWO had an unparalleled reputation for the work it did. It had a well established, fantastic team and it would have been a tragedy to lose that. The whole raison d’etre for forming Chichester Stoneworks was to preserve that team and that is what we did.”

Other members of the CWO team have now become Szerelmey Conservation, which rents space in Chichester Stoneworks’ offices, as does the computer company that provides Chichester Stoneworks with its IT services. Because the masonry company is smaller than its predecessor it does not need as much office space and it made sense to rent out some of it.

One part of the new business being developed is supply only to other contractors. CWO always made its stone processing services available to the trade but in the past, trade customers would often have come up against CWO when tendering for projects. It is less likely they will now because Chichester Stoneworks intends to concentrate on high quality, specialist work. When there is an element of that specialism in a project being carried out by other companies, Chichester Stoneworks would be happy to be approached to produce it. It has already done some supply-only work for Lovells by producing pediments, festoons and cartouches for a project in Pall Mall.

“We are never going to be cladding producers – we don’t have the facilities,” says Adam. “But turning out high quality, high added value work – something that takes eight hours, not half an hour – that’s where our strength is.”

It is hard to look at Chichester Stoneworks without comparing it with CWO but, understandably, Adam is keen to leave the past behind. “We try not to look at the past other than remembering the lessons we have learned,” he says.

Those lessons include what you might expect them to in terms of cash flow and getting paid. CWO was not alone in forgetting some of the basics as it chased work but the phrase ‘mutual benefit’ has now become something of a mantra for Adam Stone. He uses it in relation to clients, suppliers and staff. He says there are principal contractors who see benefits as being all one way and Chichester Stoneworks has no intention of dealing with them.

“It was a constant battle for CWO trying to get paid. It was like a game of chess, all the time manoeuvring to get reasonable payment terms. We’re being more hard nosed about it. We’re prepared to walk away because there’s no point in doing a job that you don’t make any money out of.”

Another lesson learnt is about VAT. With different rates of VAT on work and it not always being completely clear what constitutes renovation, restoration or alteration, and with clients keen to avoid paying the tax, the waters can be muddy. CWO had accepted some client teams’ assessments of what rate of VAT should be paid. Then it was subjected to a VAT inspection that looked back six years and HM Revenue & Customs did not agree with all the assessments. Not only did CWO have to pay the VAT, it also had to pay the penalties for not having paid it previously.

“All these sorts of lessons learnt from CWO we are taking forward with us,” says Adam. “We want to build up a sustainable business so we have some sort of buffer because, yes, there will be another downturn.”

The first year’s trading for Chichester Stoneworks has been a good one, as it has for many stone companies and the construction industry in general, with the growing economy providing a welcome boost at last.

No doubt some of those hurt by the collapse of CWO will resent the emergence of Chichester Stoneworks. Others might more magnanimously think: There but for the Grace of God go I. Adam remains philosophical: “Here we are. We have this business which we are cautiously optimistic about – and that’s probably an understatement.”