Showcasing Q3 hard services’ latest prestigious new contract in Chelsea

The Q3 hard services team has secured a new, high-end, residential maintenance contract with GWRC (Grosvenor Waterside Residents Company Ltd), a Resident Management Company responsible for the exclusive Grosvenor Waterside development in Chelsea.

Situated on the banks of the river Thames, and set across seven and a half acres, the development comprises numerous apartments and penthouses, housed in a collection of impressive buildings surrounding the historic dock.

Following a successful competitive tendering process, Q3 will be providing a range of mechanical and electrical (M&E) building services to Grosvenor Waterside.

With experience from similar contracts such as Magna Park, Windsor, Q3 has good insight into the challenges of providing a quality service in high-end residential environments, as well as a strong understanding of the high expectations of the occupiers. The company will tailor the M&E service around a resident-focused approach and will ensure their service is both responsive and adaptable through the application of a dedicated CAFM (Computer Aided Facilities Management) system.

Commenting on the contract award, Sacha Marshall-Ocaña, Chief Executive and Estate General Manager at GWRC, said, “It was important to find a service partner who understands not only the requirements of our residential clients but also one who can provide financial visibility and transparency in its delivery. As a management company responsible for a site on this scale, it is important that we engage with suppliers who are in tune with all the financial and commercial complexities of forecasting, CAPEX and maintenance budgeting.”

Harry Leeson, Managing Director of Q3 Hard Services, said, “We’re extremely proud to be adding Grosvenor Waterside to our portfolio and look forward to working with the on-site team to deliver first class FM services.”

Another Integrated FM contract win for Q3

Q3 Services has secured a three-year, first-generation, multi-site, FM contract with Satellite Applications Catapult, one of a network of nine Catapult technology and innovation centres established by Innovate UK to deliver impact across the UK economy.

The multi-service, integrated FM contract mobilised in April, across all Satellite Applications Catapult locations in the UK and will be coordinated through a centralised helpdesk and Facilio CAFM software technology.

Donna Johnston, Head of Estates and Facilities Management for Satellite Applications Catapult, said, “Our decision to appoint Q3 Services followed a robust market exercise. We are delighted that Q3 have a close cultural alignment and a desire to embrace a partnership approach to service delivery which matches our own aspirations. Their ability to deploy technology and innovation as an integral part of their service will improve our service delivery internally and externally enormously.”

Mark Hazelwood, Managing Director IFM said, “It’s exciting to be working with Satellite Applications Catapult, operating as it does at the cutting edge of the space industry. Q3 continues to break new ground with its Integrated FM model, by listening and understanding our client needs and creating a bespoke solution they know will work for them.”

Q3 has acquired Millenium Cleaning Services, Jersey

Q3 Services Channel Islands has acquired 100% capital in Millenium Cleaning Services Limited (MCS), based in Jersey.

This acquisition emphasises Q3’s commitment to expanding its presence in the Channel Islands, where it believes there is potential to realise many new business opportunities in both Jersey and Guernsey.

We welcome José Alves, the previous owner of the business, into the Q3 team in Jersey, working alongside Q3’s Operations Director, Matthew Galvin.

Ken Nicolle Managing Director of Q3 Services said: “Q3 is confident to further invest in the future of our Channel Island businesses and we look forward to developing close relationships with the MCS clients.”

MCS will retain the MCS brand and continue to operate from offices by the harbour in St. Helier.

Q3 were advised on the acquisition by Rebecca de Freitas and Chris Hendry of law firm Viberts.

Q3 is making its way in the world of FM, on a journey that has already had a few twists and turns. CEO Martyn Freeman recounts the story.

This April, Q3 celebrates its 5th birthday. From the germ of an idea in 2018, the company has grown in a short space to become a fully-fledged FM business, employing around 400 people and turning over just under £25 million per annum. It’s been an interesting, eventful and sometimes chaotic development process but one that Martyn Freeman founder and CEO looks back on with fond memories and not inconsiderable pride, for what has been a great team achievement.

This is his retrospective on those five years.

“I suppose the creation of Q3 Services came about as a result of a series of happy coincidences. Call it happenchance, or synchronicity, but with a few more twists and turns, it might not even have happened at all.

“In 2017, I was on gardening leave from my role as Chief Development and Strategy Officer with the UK’s largest FM company, when a number of moving parts coincided to open up the possibility of Q3. I guess the stars aligned!

“I enjoyed plenty of free time to consider the prospect of life after 25 years at Mitie and was already wrestling with everything that challenge entailed. I had lived in a people-orientated business for so long, alongside individuals with whom I had really enjoyed working. When there was a threat that this might be taken away, it represented a much bigger wrench than I had first realised. Working in FM is different to other types of company because of the people dimension.

“What would I do for the next 20 years if I were not working with people? Where could I find the camaraderie and the spark one gets from interacting and collaborating with like-minded colleagues?

“As I watched a new management team shape the new direction for my old business, I became aware of other colleagues from the organisation facing this same unsettling, disruptive, prospect and asking similar questions. Many were disillusioned with what they had been doing in recent times, facing a career crisis, and wondering what to do next.

“I guess if people had been happy with their lot, maybe Q3 wouldn’t have happened. However, a few exiles got talking about their personal predicaments and plans, and the idea for creating Q3 was mooted as a potential solution to everyone’s problems.

“Originally, the extent of our ambition was to start a cleaning company. But no, we quickly realised that we needed to develop a broader range of FM services. And, if we were to do it, it needed to be different and totally unlike the corporate FM culture we had left behind.

“We also knew, that for the new venture to work we had to cut the crap and reject all the stuff that adds little or no value to a business… meetings for meetings sake or working with non-productive people. We had to let go of old ways of working where many of us spent 90% on our time justifying internally what we were doing, and why. Now the focus had to be 100% on establishing and growing a new business, and making it succeed. Oh, and we wanted to put the word “fun” back into what we were doing, which in the early days was a lot easier said than done.

“Our new start-up had to have “meaning” and integral to that was establishing strong teamwork and creating the right culture to allow the business to thrive on the strengths, skills and talents of its people. That meant, not just saying that we are a people business but actually being one – looking after people and encouraging them to adopt our values to create great service and happy clients. The Q3 name evolved in fact from the original values we aspired to – Quality people, quality services and quality clients.

“My ambition was to grow the business so that we would not be scraping around looking for a client who’s happy this week to give you a reference but be in a position to just give a potential client the whole client list to choose from, knowing any one of them would be delighted to give a good reference.

“However, early doors, we were a long way from realising such ambitions. There were some difficult choices to be made. We had to set aside personal ambition for career development and focus 100% on growing the company and giving the whole adventure wings.

“We knew it wouldn’t be easy but hadn’t anticipated some of the difficulties. Just because people were successful in the corporate world, doesn’t mean they can repeat this in a new start-up business, without the cotton-wool protection and resources of a large, established company. You can have a great business plan and pour in lots of investment but getting any traction from a standing start is incredibly difficult. Any kudos or respect you enjoyed previously was about your position and achievements in the context of that old role. Once you have left it, people have short memories. You realise that you are on your own, you have to have your wits about you and push so much harder to make the initial breakthrough. We couldn’t believe how difficult it became just trying to fix a meeting with prospective clients, being so new into the market.

“You must remember too, that this was not exactly a great time to be launching a new FM business. The industry was going through an identity crisis of its own and the love for outsourcing and the FM sector was waning from both institutions and clients. It had started with negative publicity around large public sector contracts not being fulfilled, various profit warnings amongst major PLCs, poor results, and liquidations. What a time to launch Q3!

“However, in business, like many areas of life, I believe that if you work hard enough, you create your own luck. We certainly made a few moves that weren’t in the playbook or business plan. Some decisions worked and some didn’t. Buying the Channel Islands operations from OCS was just one crazy decision that in the long term has turned out to be a master stroke, because it provided several famous brand reference points from from its client base.

“I wonder how many FM businesses put a plan in place and actually stick to it. I love the philosophy of John Harvey-Jones, ex-Chairman of ICI who said, ‘Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.’

“How we got to £25m in five years is not written down in any book. Spontaneous decisions taken along the way (good and bad) more often than not determined the outcome. Fortunately, for Q3 the majority of decisions turned out well, but how do you bottle that formula?

“From the early days, we continue to reinvest our profit to bring on board new talent and to ensure our operations were supported to do their jobs properly. To me, this is proper management, proper continuous improvement. You should never get to a point where you have a crisis, if you work hard enough on continuous improvement. If you ever find yourself going through an unforced restructure, then continuous improvement has not been embedded in your day-to-day activities. You have to work at it constantly – continuous improvement has to be an everyday management activity.

“We have now built an infrastructure to be able to never say ‘no’ to a client because we have the talent, resource and capability to carry through any demands placed on us.

“We have now reached our 5-year anniversary but as a business, we are in our teens in terms of development. There is a level of maturity about Q3 that is beyond our years. I have the image in my head of a spotty teenager, ready to fearlessly fly the nest and take on the world, undaunted by the what the future may hold.

“Looking forward, success in the next five years does not necessarily mean repeating exactly what we did in the first five. Yes, the rudiments of nurturing talent, and our values – Quality People, Services and Workplaces remain consistent but we will have to work very differently. We have contemplated/evaluated where we have got to and what needs to happen next, and we have reset our 5-year strategy.

“Driving for growth and being unstructured worked before, but now we are becoming more focused in our approach and are redefining our mission and vision. We’re making sure that where we have holes in internal and external processes, we address them. The team has been mature about this and systematically we are dealing with things and ironing out the wrinkles. As we go down this new growth path, we must ensure that the backbone of the business remains strong, to facilitate this new approach.

“I see a marketplace that is polarising right now. At one end sit the big corporate FM machines, existing for clients who are looking for a safe multi-site, off-the-shelf, self-delivered solution. They are voracious beasts and driven by the need to secure high revenue contracts that can satisfy their hunger and the demands of their shareholders. It’s an area in which we have chosen not to compete.

“However, there are many other potential clients who don’t want that kind of approach, and that is where we are more than happy to fit in. Here, we are in our element because we can apply our vast experience and knowledge to be creative, different, and imaginative, to tailor something unique in FM terms. Something that perhaps the client didn’t even know they wanted.

“I wonder, when I sit down in another five years, will things have turned out as I imagined?”

Planet Mark certification renewed and a 27% reduction in CO2 emissions

Q3 has declared 2035 as the target year for achieving Net Zero status and in the second year of its Carbon Management and Reduction Plan, is making excellent progress, recording a 27% reduction in CO2 emissions over the last twelve months.

The company has once again worked with Planet Mark to assess and validate its carbon emissions activity and has received a renewal of the Planet Mark certification for the 2021-22 financial year.

The achievement is even more remarkable, as the company has expanded significantly during this period, both through organic growth and the acquisition of the Newtons Group business, which was also included in the audit. The Newtons’ operation in Southend-on-Sea added to the overall buildings carbon footprint but a change in the mix of services delivered, resulted in a reduction in vehicle fuel emissions, creating a net reduction overall. Measures to reduce the level of operational emissions are also taking effect.

Commenting on the result, CEO Martyn Freeman said, “I’m pleased with the progress we are making on our Net Zero journey. The inclusion of Newtons’ hard services expertise to our overall FM offer means we have the in-house skills to tackle the challenges we face, not only within our organisation but also for our clients, who are on the same journey.”

Q3’s updated carbon reduction plan may be viewed and downloaded from our website: Carbon Management and Reduction Plan

Reproduced from an interview originally published in FM Director publication, November 2022

Speaking to Dennis Flower of the FM Director publication, just as the UK government announced its intentions to reduce expenditure and prepare for the perceived economic downturn, Q3 chief executive officer Martyn Freeman considers the effect this will have on the FM sector.

“Looking back at other periods like this shows that outsourcing providers usually do well during times of recession. That’s because clients tend to outsource more to cut costs during difficult times, so we don’t see any major difficulties if the recession that everyone is talking about actually happens.”

With rising costs and interest rates impacting companies and individuals in all areas, he recalls the difficulties faced in the 1980s, when interest rates peaked at 17%, to make the point that there are numerous examples of how the UK economy has been impacted and overcome similar challenges. “We’ll just have to see how long and how deep the latest recession goes, but I’m always buoyant because we always see opportunities, regardless of whether it’s boom, bust or somewhere in between.”

One of the issues that will need to be addressed, he continues, is that of the level of risk that contractors are required to accept. He provides the example of negotiations for contracts starting in the near future and the level of inflation these should include. “If you’re signing up to supply services over the course of five years, should you include 10% inflation, or go for 5% and hope that the price rises we’re seeing at the moment fall back and you don’t end up losing out?” he asks.

The conversation moves to discuss the current position of Q3 Services, which Mr Freeman and his senior team launched just over five years ago. He describes the unique challenges that need to be overcome when starting a new business, particularly when the founders are used to working for large businesses with high levels of supportive resources.

Having seen the business become firmly established and grow to the point it has acquired other companies to add more fuel to its expansion, he states that this has enabled the company to take on increasingly more contracts of wider scope.

“Q3 is doing well and we’re seeing more of our work following the IFM route as part of our evolution. We’ve been able to take on larger contracts and this has also led to more large contracts as we’ve worked our way up the food chain and we’ve made sure that our growth has always been sustainable.

“We’ve been careful to work with the clients that understand the benefits of paying the Living Wage and the value of sustainable margins, which means we can continue to look after our customers and our people.

“We’re still a private company and that makes us very attractive to clients for various reasons. And the best thing about working for larger organisations in the past is that you can take the best things and run with these to avoid some of the other aspects that can be counter productive,” he continues.

“We’ve always focused on getting the balance right and establishing the right structure for the company, looking after clients and making sure we had all the basic things in place to keep the business expanding. But then you need to get more serious and look at the more important areas of business development by working with the best advisors and the most motivational people.

“This has seen us progress from being a service provider in the early years to being regarded more as a valued service partner by clients and industry partners,” he says.

One of the results of becoming “more serious” has been the holding of the company’s first future strategy meeting with its senior management team, providing more fuel for thought on the best way to move further forward. One of the options being considered is that of transitioning the business to become a social enterprise.

“The Q3 senior management team meets every two weeks and initially this included six people, but I counted 40 of us on our most recent call, which shows how much we’ve grown in five years. We have a responsibility to look after all our staff and our clients and it’s also important that we have the right look and feel for the business and make sure we help customers to deliver their property management strategies.”

He further states that companies have aligned themselves with the various trends that range from net zero carbon emissions to environmental and social governance (ESG) to the point where there are now fewer key differentiators. Having aligned Q3 with social values from the company’s launch, Mr Freeman now sees this as becoming even more central to its future development.

“Having started as a boutique company and offering specialist services, we’re now looking at the bigger picture to ensure we retain our core values and build further on them with the aim of making them even more meaningful,” he continues. “This may include more investment in our people to help them achieve more in their careers.

“It’s no longer enough to just pay the Living Wage, which we’ve done for a few years now, you have to support them with things like the increased cost of living. Adopting more social values will help us to give back, which could see us donate a percentage of our profits to charity in the future, but we’re still on a social enterprise learning curve.”

With both the National Living Wage and Real Living Wage rates set to increase by around 10% in 2023, he states that this will be a “big shock to some clients”, particularly those still suffering the effects of the pandemic and other issues. “But in the end it’s a matter of engaging with clients and finding the best way to proceed, which may result in finding improved methods of service delivery.”

This should also include more transparency at the tender stage of contracts, combined with increased engagement with those in the bidding process, he continues. That will allow both sides to ensure that they work together in the most effective manner from the start of the relationship, rather than having to do this at a later stage and increasing the likelihood of mistakes and misunderstandings.

Expanding further on this topic, he explains that the pandemic has seen significant changes in building occupancy for both the public and private sectors, which provides opportunities for clients to work with service providers and adapt where necessary. An example of this could be the seasonal changes in offices that see occupancy levels increase and decline at specific times of the year, allowing services to be reduced during the lowest attendance periods.

“The best approach is to engage with clients as early as possible and plan in advance for new developments, such as the increased Living Wage rate. But at least the service industry is better than the utilities sector, where you just get a letter telling you how much more you’ll have to pay. We’re much better at discussing and mitigating issues and working with clients to find solutions that work for everyone.”

Continuing the discussion on payment of the Real Living Wage and the inclusion of other initiatives, Mr Freeman states that it is important not to “hide behind the badge” and continue to develop each business in ways that will benefit staff members, clients, facilities users and society in general. In many ways improved payment levels for staff is an excellent place to begin the journey, but it is then important to realise this can be built on and improved.

Everyone needs to play their part in this, he continues, and that requires effort and appreciation from service providers, clients, the government and industry bodies to encourage all those involved to have “more human conversations” in both the private and public sector.

“It shouldn’t just a be box ticking exercise and we all need to appreciate that we have to focus on providing genuine social and environmental policies, including paying the Living Wage and promoting this to everyone so they understand the needs and the benefits of paying it,” he says.
There has been a notable increase in FM mergers and acquisitions (M&A) since the easing of pandemic restrictions and Mr Freeman states that this is likely to see Q3 announcing further deals as part of its future growth. He states that the industry continues to benefit from having a large number of smaller companies that continue to work to high standards, several of which will provide attractive options for M&A deals with larger companies in the near future.

One of the regular areas of discussion for the FM sector is client attitudes toward outsourced services, which can be seen to have waxed and waned in previous decades. He states that there has been a notable return to the use of in-house services in the social housing sector, which may spread further to the residential FM market.

“We work in a very cyclical industry but we’re always seeing new companies enter the FM sector, although it’s become more professional in recent years and isn’t as easy to enter as it used to be. There’s now much more legislation and accreditation required and we know from our own experience that there’s less financial support available for new service provider businesses,” Mr Freeman concludes.

His continuing enthusiasm for Q3 and its growth provides further confirmation of the strength and depth of the FM sector, which has proved highly capable of adjusting and adapting to all the challenges faced in the past and particularly those associated with the Coronavirus pandemic.