Babcock International Group PLC
Babcock is the UK’s leading engineering support services organisation. Operating in the UK and overseas, we are trusted to deliver complex and critical support to the defence, energy, emergency services, transport and education sectors. We pride ourselves on our long-term customer focused relationships and engineering excellence.
Company details
Find locations served, office locations
- Business Type:
- Engineering service provider
- Industry Type:
- Environmental Management
- Market Focus:
- Globally (various continents)
- Year Founded:
- 1891
- Employees:
- Over 1000
This company also provides solutions for other industrial applications.
Please, visit the following links for more info:
About Us
Strategic Objectives
We have an overriding objective that drives the way we do business:
To maintain our position as the leading engineering support services business in the UK and selected overseas markets, thereby creating value for our stakeholders - our customers, our investors and our people.
We will achieve this through:
- Leading market positions
- Working with preferred customers
- Supporting customer focused, long term relationships
- Integrating engineering and technical expertise
- Balancing risk and reward
- Maintaining an excellent safety record
Responsibilities
Supporting sustainable growth
We recognise that committing time and resources to the proper management of non-financial matters as well as financial performance is of critical importance to sustaining the long-term value and prospects of Babcock and to achieving our strategic goals. The acquisition of VT and its integration into the Babcock Group has been a further opportunity to review how we manage and evaluate our performance in areas including customer relations, human resources, health, safety and the environment. In the sections below, we look at our current principal areas of focus.
Heritage
Over 120 years of technical and engineering solutions
To find out about our history from 1891, explore the interactive timeline, above. It gives an overview of our progress from day one, and includes some of our recent acquisitions. A selection of significant contract wins and acquisitions since 2002 are also listed in the sub-menu.
How We Work
Babcock manages critically important assets that help to bring power to our homes and businesses, keep trains running safely, ensure mobile phone networks stay operational and help our armed forces defend national interests.
Managing asset portfolios of this scale and complexity requires modern technical skills, a thorough knowledge of the operating environment and the flexibility to meet changing needs. Which is why, when selecting a service partner who can be trusted to deliver, Babcock is chosen again and again.
Our approach is a straightforward one:
- Understand what our stakeholders want - our customers, our investors and our people.
- Keep their interests in balance.
- Decide upon a clear strategy.
- Select the right people to implement it.
- Set achievable targets.
- Delegate responsibility to the people dealing with customers on a daily basis.
The way we do business is central to the fulfillment of our long-term Group strategy.
We believe that this strategy will be best achieved by applying the following principles to our business activity:
- Maintaining a customer-focused organisation with a strong partnering culture.
- Growing a balanced portfolio of businesses that are positioned within the top three in their marketplace.
- Winning long-term contracts with critical asset and infrastructure owners, primarily government bodies and blue chip companies.
- Delivering year-on-year growth and shareholder returns in line with our expectations.
- Balancing risk and reward.
- Maintaining an excellent safety record.
This strategy has been the foundation of Babcock's success over the years and will continue to serve us well for the future.
View our contract case studies to find out more about how we approach our customers complex needs and provide affordable solutions.
Customer Service Philosophy
Strong customer relationships are at the heart of any successful services business. We pride ourselves on our ability to operate in partnership with our customers, working closely to deliver jointly agreed objectives and knowing each customer and their environment well enough to be able to anticipate their future requirements.
So how have we established strong organisational partnerships? Babcock believes that the most enduring partnering arrangements are built around seven key elements:
- Shared goals and objectives
- Mutual trust
- Being honest in all dealings
- Identifying and understanding mutual interests
- Having strong personal relationships
- Taking a long-term view
- Meeting, even exceeding, the expected outcomes
In implementing such arrangements, there can be no shortcuts or half measures nor should the parties be put off by early problems. Building successful relationships takes hard work, good communication and total honesty.
In addition, both parties must understand how the other defines 'success' in terms of their business arrangements and this must be expressed in a form that is both identifiable and measurable.
Since the outcome of this approach cannot be left to chance, we commission regular reviews of the workings of our business partnering arrangements to assess where they are working well and also to look for the telltale signs of where they might fail.
Our aim is to build an enduring reputation that Babcock is not just an organisation which delivers the goods, but is easy and pleasurable to do business with.
Service Performance Philosophy
Whilst the strength of customer relationships is crucial to any service business, it should never supplant the importance of contract deliverables. These are the foundations of our past, and future, success. We have built a reputation as an organisation that delivers what it promises. In addition, we must measure our performance by the metrics used by our customers, and the bodies who regulate them.
Now we must take one step further and not just be happy with meeting basic contractual requirements, but develop a desire to always exceed our own customers' expectations.
Only then will we be able to build a reputation as an organisation that anticipates the need to change and always goes that extra yard.
Value For Shareholders
Many of our shareholders have been long-term investors in Babcock and have seen the value of their investment rise significantly over recent years, benefiting as our company has grown in scale and financial security. The largest proportion of investors in Babcock, just under half, are identified as Growth Investors - investors who are seeking to grow their capital as we grow our earnings. Those who were fortunate enough to be invested in Babcock in 2000 have seen earnings per share grow from 0.55 pence to 33.4 pence in the 2007/08 financial year.
However these investors are looking forward. They have chosen Babcock because they are confident we can meet the growth in revenues and profits predicted by the market and return money to them in the form of steadily increasing dividends. Their confidence is underpinned by the strength of our orderbook and the visibility of future earnings this gives as well as our ability to generate strong cash flows.
The confidence investors have in Babcock is supported by a number of other things:
- Our open and honest approach to communication
- Our commitment to 'tell it as it is' and the consistency with which we have met or exceeded growth targets
- The clarity of our strategic plan and the competitive advantage this has given us
- Our balanced approach to risk management
- Our effective governance structures
- The strength of our management teams
Everyone has a part to play in ensuring we continue to focus on these issues and deliver strong financial results. Investor confidence in Babcock has taken a long time to build and, by ensuring we continue to do the important things well and don't disappoint, it will continue to be enhanced in the future.
Developing Our People
Our business arrangements with our customers require us to deliver services on a complex array of projects and assets.
Our people have an impressive range of skills and competencies: engineering, management, technical, commercial, administrative and developmental to name but a few.
As our business expands the development of our people, present and future, is a critical part of our business development activity.
Employee development covers a broad spectrum from apprenticeships through graduate development to continuing professional development. In addition, we have created, in partnership with the Strathclyde Business School, the Babcock Academy which helps refresh and enhance the strategic planning, commercial and leadership skills of our managers and senior executives.
Given our commitment to employee development across the board, employees should enjoy a long and satisfying career at Babcock in an environment that values their contribution, rewards them properly, and is absolutely committed to their safety and wellbeing.