The two stone companies owned by Lady Fairhaven of Anglesey Abbey joined forces in October to become Fairhaven & Woods Ltd to make a concerted effort to gain more of the best major stone projects. NSS paid them a visit to talk about the move.

Pulling into the car park of what has been one of the two sites of Fairhaven & Woods since the combined company was formed at the beginning of October you see the sort of work you expect of this company. It is a larger-than-life carving of Atlantis supporting the world emerging from a massive piece of Carrara marble under the skillful hands of Paul Jakeman.

In the meeting room are displayed scale maquettes from earlier sculptures carried out by Tim Crawley, the former head carver at Rattee & Kett with whom Lady Fairhaven of Anglesey Abbey established the masonry company in Bottisham, Cambridge, that carried her husband’s title in 1999.

In 2006 she bought another masonry company, AJ Woods in Norwich, from Rattee & Kett. But the two companies continued to operate separately until October last year. What brought them together was the appointment of Gary Smith as general manager.

Gary was previously a director of Woods but had left to start his own stone project management / consultancy company, which he still runs and which brought more than £300,000 worth of work to Fairhaven last year.

More was on its way with £500,000 worth of stonework on the second stage of one project and three private new builds under negotiation when Fairhaven & Woods was launched at a party for their 26 employees (including those from Norwich bussed down for the event) and around 60 clients, architects and other guests in Bottisham last year (see NSS November 2008).

The move to merge the two companies started after Lady Fairhaven asked Gary to come and see her last January.

Gary says: “We sat round a table with a cup of coffee for two hours and there we are. I’m engaged as general manager. I’m supposed to do three days a week but it has taken a bit more than that lately.

“It seemed entirely logical to merge the companies,” he told NSS. “This is a feast and famine industry, as everyone knows, but a major project helps smooth out the peaks and troughs. Any business needs at least one major project.”

Their main target area for those projects is London and the Home Counties, East Anglia and East Midlands, although they will also work further afield if the right project comes along from outside those areas. They have, for example, supplied some major stone carvings to customers in America.

What defines a major project is one that is going to provide a steady flow of work for 18 months or so. In the fortnight after the Fairhaven / Woods merger they tendered for four projects with a total of £2.1million worth of stonework. “It’s the right calibre of work for this business.”

Being able to tender for these larger projects makes the combined business worth more than the sum of its two parts, as well as producing some efficiencies through the elimination of duplication without spending large sums to achieve it and also without losing any jobs.

Once there are major projects providing a level of comfort it becomes clear what capacity is available for smaller jobs that reduce the proportion of the firm’s exposure to any one project.

Being more secure and efficient is certainly going to be a benefit in a year that looks like presenting the most challenging trading conditions since the early 1990s at least, although they say there are still projects coming on stream.

“I keep waiting for it to stop, but it’s the other way round at the moment. I got a call last week from someone wanting a sample panel. Of course, they want it next week even though they have spent two years on the design. It’s another multi-million pound project. We have got a very healthy order book and are still tendering at a very high level,” says Gary.

As well as their own contracting projects, Fairhaven & Woods also supply other stone contractors and Gary Smith is keen to maintain that balance of work, which he believes will require some investment in sawing capacity to add to the Alpe primary saw, nine Terzago secondaries and three lathes they already have.

They also have their own accredited conservator in Matthew Beesley. A chemist and skilled analyst with his own laboratory at Fairhaven’s Bottisham workshops, he is often called upon to act as a consultant on projects, whether or not Fairhaven & Woods are carrying out the contract. If they are, it would usually be in the province of restoration manager Rob Humphreys.

“There aren’t many companies with our spread of in-house skills,” says Gary.

While the level of enquiries may be holding up, what Gary has noticed is a lengthening of the time it is taking to get paid. The construction industry takes long enough to pay at the best of times, but he says it has become worse lately and everyone he has spoken to tells the same story.

It is not a philosophy Lady Fairhaven, who also has her own construction company, intends to pursue. She believes paying suppliers promptly has its own rewards every bit as valuable as improving cash flow – but then her companies do work for people who think it is perfectly normal to spend half-a-million pounds at a time. Nevertheless she says: “I think there will be two years of discomfort.”

The reason Lady Fairhaven wanted to start her own masonry company in the first place was because she valued so highly the skills of the mason and carver.

It was the same reason she bought Woods. She wanted to preserve the 210 years of skills embedded in the people working there – 45 of them in Keith Oram and 28 in Alastair Aitken, directors of the company – and the reputation of Woods earned over more than a century working with the cathedrals, churches, stately homes and public buildings of Norfolk.

Woods are proud of their high level of repeat business that reflects the confidence clients have in them. For example, they have just completed the third phase of the restoration of Great Yarmouth Town Hall, which has involved the replacement of extensive sections of moulded stonework in St Bees sandstone.

With the coming together of the two companies, Tim Crawley, a Director of Fairhaven, and Keith Oram and Alastair Aitken also joined the board of Fairhaven & Woods.

Gary Smith says it was the culture of insisting on quality and satisfying the customer above all else that attracted him when Lady Fairhaven first spoke to him and told him: “Regardless of the workload, we won’t compromise on quality.”

Tim Crawley emphasises the point: “People do this job because they love it. You’re motivated by the passion for the work.”

And they are committed to passing the skills on to the future, currently employing five apprentices at the two branches.

One of the apprentices – 24-year-old Weston Charlesworth, who attends Moulton College – was chosen as last year’s East of England Construction Industry Apprentice of the Year.

Lady Fairhaven says of Weston: “I think it’s very encouraging to have a young man as enthusiastic, good mannered, hard working and appreciative of the opportunity he’s had here as Weston is. He’s growing up to be a huge asset to us.”

He is just the sort of person Fairhaven & Woods want, adds Gary Smith. “We will always maintain the level of apprentices. As far as we’re concerned bringing up our own people is the way to go.”

They are also willing to give opportunities to other motivated individuals outside the traditional apprenticeship system. Alex Shore, for instance, is currently on a temporary placement funded by the Prince of Wales Building Craft Apprenticeship Scheme at their Cambridge works. This is an initiative supported by the Prince of Wales which offers building craftspeople the opportunity to advance their knowledge and experience of traditional and sustainable building crafts.

Fairhaven & Woods want to make sure there is a future at the company for all their craftspeople, which may mean growth that could include taking over other companies, says Gary. He adds however: “We won’t expand for the sake of it. It will be controlled growth which will suit the sort of projects and the volume of projects we are seeking.

“Carving and conservation aside, we see ourselves as a masonry company and we’re looking for bigger and better projects – better perhaps than have been considered for before. That is happening now with the latest batch of projects we’re tendering for.”