For 100 years Playfords has been operating as an electrical contractor out of the East of England. However, lately the firm has been focusing on more specialistic projects. “Although we are a century old, our business is entering a new era. We are taking a more modern approach to our work,” says James Tuohy, Playfords’ Managing Director. “We pride ourselves on being high quality, client-focused and delivery driven. We build longstanding relationships with our clients, and we are selective of the type of work we do.”
Tuohy is overseeing significant investment and change in the business, with the goal of putting Playfords at the forefront of the electrical contracting marketplace. Tuohy wants to overhaul how the company operates, its staff and team, and even relocate specific areas of the business to the right place.
“We are developing a much more focused approach to what we do,” Tuohy says.
But while Playfords is in the process of reevaluating the way it works and the projects it takes on, the company continues to prioritise the relationships it has built with its clients.
“The thing we believe in and really work hard on is forming client relationships focused on delivery. We want projects to succeed for ourselves and our clients,” Tuohy points out.
Playfords’ approach is not just to win a job and focus on completing it while achieving a profit margin. Instead, Tuohy’s vision is for the company to take in the bigger picture, powered by a homegrown, in-house talent pool.
“Our engineering team are born and bred Playfords. These are team members who have been with us for a long time,” explains Tuohy. “They share our culture and ethos, and believe in the partnership approach we take with our clients.”
That means rather than completing a job and moving on, Playfords aims to do as many as ten to twelve jobs in a row for any given client. It is an approach that has seen Playfords build strong relationships with clients including British Sugar, who the firm has served for over 50 years, as well as more than 20 years of collaboration with John Lewis, and nurturing decade-long relationships with a selection of key NHS clients.
As Tuohy says, “These are key, longstanding clients who we provide with high quality projects and high quality service. We add value to everything we do.”
Working Closely
Of course, it is easy for any relationship to look great when times are good. It is when times are challenging that these relationships are tested. Tuohy tells us that the last four-to-five years have been the most challenging in Playfords’ century-long history.
They are hardly the first company to say this lately. From the Covid-19 pandemic, to a volatile economic environment, to a plethora of political issues the world over, the first half of this decade has been the definition of interesting times.
Playfords has weathered this through strong leadership, an agile strategy, a long-term perspective, and above all, the relationships with its customers.
“It is a collaborative approach. We work closely with our clients. During Covid, we worked hand in hand with clients to keep people safe while they were working on-site,” says Tuohy. “With many of our clients being in the public sector, the change of governments caused budgets to be delayed for NHS clients. We worked to assist them with economic challenges, ensuring we were in the place where they needed us, providing accurate proposals, quotations and numbers to get work moving.”
Tuohy tells us that this relationship-based approach is a consequence of Playfords’ long history. It is a history that Tuohy keeps close – when the company’s current owners acquired the company from its three previous shareholders, one of them Tuohy’s father, and they made the decision to bring his father on board as a Non-Executive Director in 2024.
“Having that outside viewpoint, advice, and knowledge of the history of Playfords, has helped us focus on the longer term,” Tuohy explains. “It is easy to be blindsided by the here and now. Having that longer term perspective has allowed us to take a breath and think about next steps. I’d recommend it to anyone.”
The Next Decade
That longer perspective is going to require a steady pipeline of fresh talent, and after 100 years Playfords knows all about nurturing talent. The company’s previous shareholders established an apprenticeship program in 2008. That program has been the company’s biggest area of recruitment ever since. When we speak with Tuohy the company has 12 apprentices on the go.
“We are protective of Playfords’ culture, and that has been the most important aspect of recruitment. They need to fit in with how we deliver and how we work,” Tuohy points out.
Building on that culture is how Playfords retains that talent, by respecting and understanding its staff and their personal lives outside the business.
“Our ethos is ‘work to live’, not the other way round,” says Tuohy. “We have adapted to understand agile and remote working. It has been a big step. We have got a team of people who can take ownership of how they work, and that makes a big difference.”
Over the next decade, Tuohy plans for Playfords to consolidate its position following the difficulties of the last few years.
“We are finding our new baseline, focusing on a targeted pattern of growth for the business,” Tuohy says. “We have several areas where we are operating extremely well, and we are refining the business into three primary revenue streams.”
That includes an excellent small works division of the business that is already contributing significant turnover and profit.
“We are focusing on developing that team,” says Tuohy. “We have also worked hard to become a key supplier to the NHS, working for hospitals predominantly to carry out specialist projects. We are also bringing HV in-house, but traditional contract work is always going to be a big part of the business. Our next plan is to expand our footprint from Central London and East Anglia into the Southwest and the South of the country as well. We are going out to the Midlands from the East of England.
Playfords’ centennial anniversary is fast approaching. It is an incredible milestone for any company, but one that also marks a huge commitment to the industry. Playfords is one of the longest serving members of the NICEIC, as well as one of its first.
“We don’t like to spend our time looking back and patting ourselves on the back for past achievements,” Tuohy shares. “But we can’t overlook this milestone as we look to the future, or all the people who have contributed to the success of the business. 2025 is going to be a great year for us, but 2035 is what really excites us.”
