• • • EDITOR’S INTERVIEW • • • Next generation engineering


BGEN is a multi-disciplinary engineering solutions provider, based in Warrington, Cheshire. Simon King spoke to the company’s chief executive, Robin Whitehead, and Oliver Groarke, head of marketing and future markets


over more than £200 million, up from £126m in 2021. Mr Whitehead said: “We’ve seen considerable


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growth this year in terms of turnover across the board.” He started off as an apprentice electrician in the


mid-1980s, working for East Midlands Electricity, which is where he first became aware of BGEN. “At that time, the industrial application of the


electrical contractor, really interested me. It’s not domestic, it’s not commercial, it’s not retail – it involved often working in hazardous and specialist environments and all that kind of interesting stuff.” After East Midlands Electricity, which included a


management buy-out of East Midlands Contracting, Mr Whitehead spent several years developing and delivering projects globally for different organisations. Mr Whitehead joined BGEN 19 years ago,


initially as a project manager looking after some of the company’s utility frameworks clients and electrical automation projects. He was appointed a director of the business


around eight years ago and took over as managing director four years ago. He was invited to join the board in January 2021 and seven months later was appointed chief executive. Mr Whitehead said: “My first job as CEO was to


work with Oliver Groarke to rebrand the business. The strap line for the business is Next Generation Engineering and I am really interested in how we


stablished in Warrington in 1918, the business has seen considerable growth in the last year and this year BGEN will turn


bring onboard new talent within the business and how we grow the engineering sector. “Electrical is only part of what we offer. In terms


of multidisciplinary, our bread and butter was electrical, and that’s how we started, with electrical contracting, but in terms of what we actually provide now, our services are a lot broader in the sectors we operate in. “Self-delivery is now our bread and butter. We do


everything in house, but we have specialist subcontractors that we utilise for certain things.” BGEN has 16 offices across the UK and in 2021,


it opened a separate subsidiary in Lagos, Nigeria. Looking at the company’s financials – primarily


its forecasted jump in turnover this year – Mr Whitehead said there were several reasons why the business has grown in the last 12 months. He said: “Firstly, alongside a solid performance


within BGEN, our subsidiaries, particularly our food (BFP) and pharmaceutical (BES) businesses with their specialist design and build capabilities, have had fantastic years. Secondly, our range of services helping our customers on their journey to net zero have started to gain real traction. “Thirdly, some of this growth is Covid-related, in


terms of projects being delayed and we’re now in that tsunami wave where those projects have been signed off, and we’ll get on with it. “We are well prepared, we didn’t sit on our


laurels and wait for that tsunami, we were doing a lot of work in the background, resourcing up, skilling up and making sure we invested in the right areas to make sure we were ready.”


BGEN currently has around 1,100 employees,


but Mr Whitehead said that there’s an element of flexibility around staffing as the business is a project delivery organisation. “We’re constantly assessing our resource


profiles for the projects we’ve successfully landed and that’s going to grow substantially over the next 12 months,” Mr Whitehead said. “We’re a people business. In terms of what we


do and how we do it, our success is mainly driven around the expertise of people. We have lots of people that spend time in our clients’ organisations helping them.” BGEN has a lot of expertise in working in


specialised heavy industry, including pharmaceuticals, and regulated industries such as utilities and nuclear. “We do a lot of retrofit swap outs, but also new


builds as well,” he said. I met Mr Whitehead and Mr Groarke at BGEN’s


system integration and low volage assemble facility in Warrington. “We’ve got 2,000 square metres where we build


motor control centres, low voltage switchboards and pre-assembled units,” Mr Whitehead said. “We’ve got 74 system integration software engineers doing PLC code automation and SCADA systems. “We used to put around £12m worth of LV


assemblies through here. While it’s not a factory, it has lots of bespoke assemblies. Last year, we managed to stretch it to £15m. Typically, assembly could take six to 12 weeks to go from design through to full testing and out the door. “We turn a lot of that type of work over in a financial year; We put a lot of apprentices through here, it’s a great learning ground for bringing apprentices into the business and we’ve got half a dozen or so here now.” Mr Whitehead said that it is a very exciting time


for the business. “Whilst we’re growing, and we’ve got all the


operational stuff going on, specifically, skills, sustainability and the supply chain are three things that have taken up a lot of my attention at the moment,” he said. “These aren’t issues, particularly, but they will be


if we don’t address them. In terms of the skills, it’s a well-known issue in the UK at the moment,.” Mr Whitehead continued: “We’re able to look


at projects very early in the process to see what labour resources and skills we need and where we need to invest, because with all the best will in the world, an apprentice now won’t start delivering for four, five or six years realistically.


12 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • MAY 2022 electricalengineeringmagazine.co.uk


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