Strategy, Governance & Operations in the Tree & Landscape Industries
Helping businesses grow to achieve their potential
Welcome
Elcoat Ltd is a group of experienced directors that share an enthusiasm for offering common sense solutions to everyday business problems and for helping clients to increase their sales and create a sustainable competitive advantage.
We are experts in the tree and landscape industries, and we have the all-round business knowledge to help you to take stock of your current position and to forge a plan to get you ahead of your competition.
We believe in strategy, in seeing things coming whilst they are still on the horizon so that the likely scenarios can be defined, and the contingencies planned.
Elcoat Ltd will help you to structure your tree and landscape business in a way where nothing is left to chance and client audits and bid management are no longer a cause for concern.
From dealing with ‘one off’ tasks, problems, or the best way to approach an opportunity, to being retained as advisors, Elcoat Ltd can help ease the burden.
We invite you to read through our schedule of professional services to see if we could help you work towards a brighter future.
- Pre-qualification questionnaires and tenders
- Approved contractor schemes such as Arb Association Approved Contractor or BALI Full Contractor
- ISO 9001 – Quality Management Systems
- ISO 14001 – Environmental Management Systems
- ISO 45001 – Health and Safety Management Systems
- CHAS, SMAS, SAFEcontractor, Constructionline etc
- Achilles for utility and rail
- Company health checking
- Coaching individuals or the team towards a certification or personal qualification
- Documentation such as policies, employment contracts, employment handbooks, COSHH, risk assessments
- Damage limitation post incident
What we do
There are many ways to describe what we do and the roles that we take for our customers; directors, advisors, partners, part time colleagues or a remote support system; we are what you need us to be.
We tend not to describe ourselves as ‘consultants’ as our style is one of becoming part of the team and being responsible and accountable for as long as we are needed. Knowledge transfer is the key; we will teach you how to do it so that you are not dependent upon us to run your systems.
Our clients use our services to help them respond to opportunities or to deal with a particular problem. They wheel us in when they need us and then wheel us back out when the job is done.
A Typical Project
A typical project will be to help a great organisation to sell more service or product. By ‘great’ we mean that they do what they do well but perhaps they don’t have the expertise or experience to fully respond to client expectations.
Thinking about one of our typical customers. They were world class in the quality of their tree work but they were finding that due to the ever increasing expectations of potential clients in terms of health, safety, environment and quality management, they were being left behind and the contracts were going to other providers who didn’t produce the same standard of work but were able to produce a few documents.
“If we meet an organisation that is excellent at what they do, we can take care of the rest.”
In this example, we put together a ‘to do’ list which ultimately lead to them becoming Arboricultural Association Approved Contractors, ISO9001 registered and listed as one of the few companies in the UK to have achieved the standard required for the National Highways Sector Scheme 18 certification. As could be predicted, this company are now doing very well and they don’t really have any local competition anymore.
The most important thing though is what the project made of the management team. They can now speak the language of operations management and produce the documentary evidence to demonstrate that they are fully in control of all risks. This gives even the most demanding client the confidence to know that when appointed, this company will not be importing uncontrolled hazards into their world. Additional benefits were the dramatic reduction in overhead cost and increased time availability due to the improved efficiency of the new management systems.
What we also find is that previous clients continue to use us to respond to opportunities when they arise as they know that despite all they have learned, they would rather be doing the things that they enjoy and let us do what we do best, produce a tender package of such astonishing quality that they couldn’t possibly not get through to the next stage in the procurement process.
We have never failed to achieve what we set out to achieve for our clients and the most common feedback we hear is that although they thought we were expensive to start with, after the initial ‘leap of faith’, returns on the project far outweigh the investment.
Guiding Principles
Some would call it social responsibility*; to us it is just the way we are.
- We aim to be easy to deal with.
- We try our best to get it right first time and on time.
- We are real people, and we hate corporate nonsense.
- We work with our customers as friends and we care about their success.
- Nobody gets hurt because of what we do.
- We work to ensure that we have a positive effect on the environment.
- The way we do things is based upon the concept of sustainability**
- The local community, the industries that we deal with and the wider community will benefit from our being in business
We are pleased to confirm that we work in compliance with the requirements of ISO9001: 2015 (Quality Management Systems) and ISO14001: 2015 (Environmental Management Systems). For health and safety, we have adopted a management system shaped by the guidance contained in ISO45001: 2018.
Locally, Elcoat Ltd sponsors events or contributes to the upkeep of several important features. At an industry level we are involved in standards and guidance development and ensure that we are available to give advice and assistance on a pro bono basis where there is evidence to suggest that there will be a tangible benefit.
Our wider community work has included giving free consultancy assistance to several NGOs in Romania and KDA in Sumatra, an NGO which aims to reduce deforestation through education.
Elcoat Ltd also provides regular financial support to carefully selected organisations where we can be sure that every penny will directly benefit the end user.
* Social responsibility is doing what you do in a way that does not negatively affect people around you or better still, by giving a little back to make things better for everyone around you.
** Sustainability is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development is necessary because global environmental degradation continues despite the introduction and enforcement of a multitude of environmental laws and regulations.