SOCOTEC is a multinational, private equity-owned Testing, Inspection, and Certification (TIC) business, headquartered in France. The overall Group’s annual revenue is currently valued at approximately 1.4 billion euros.
Despite its French origins, SOCOTEC has established a significant international presence, with platforms in the USA and throughout Europe. SOCOTEC UK is the second-largest platform within the Group, making it a critical component of the company’s global operations.
Looking ahead, SOCOTEC has set ambitious targets for the 2024 to 2028 period. The Group aims to grow its annual revenues from the current 1.4 billion euros to 2.4 billion euros over the next four years. This demonstrates SOCOTEC’s strategic focus on expanding its market share and solidifying its position as a leading global TIC provider.
The combination of SOCOTEC’s strong French heritage, diverse international footprint, and bold growth objectives highlights the company’s commitment to delivering high-quality testing, inspection, and certification services to clients around the world. As the second-largest platform, the UK division will play a pivotal role in SOCOTEC’s ability to achieve its long-term aspirations.
The UK entity has an annual revenue of approximately £200 million, with a growth trajectory going to £300 million by 2028. It has four key divisions: Environment, Building & Real-Estate, Disputes & Advisory, and Infrastructure.
Richard Hildick-Smith, managing director of Infrastructure said: “It is great to lead Socotec UK’s Infrastructure division, I’m proud of SOCOTEC’s ability to bring together all of its business units to provide clients with a single, integrated provider of multiple products and services. Our ambition as a company is to build trust and contribute to a safer, more sustainable world.”
Your Partner for Megaprojects
SOCOTEC has seen impressive growth, and in the UK two-thirds of that growth has been through acquisition. This is in accordance with SOCOTEC’s ongoing strategy to become the partner of choice for megaprojects in the UK.
“The elevator pitch for SOCOTEC is increasingly, through organic and inorganic growth, to become a single supplier for construction companies, projects, asset owners and operators,” Hildick-Smith says. “We want to be a supplier that will deliver testing, inspection and compliance services, as well as asset management and integrity services.”
Hildick-Smith is the first to admit that there is nothing unique about a company that can offer a broad range of services. But while most of those companies will rely on decentralised acquisitions or their supply chains to manage projects and support asset operations, SOCOTEC’s strategy sees it bringing more and more of those services in-house and really integrating the acquisitions into a single core offering and execution.
“We have provided support to megaprojects like HS2, Silvertown Tunnel, Lower Thames Crossing, and this morning I was at the A147 Missing Link Project,” Hildick-Smith tells us. “We are doing a lot of work for the Principal Contractor on that Project, Kier. We have a materials testing site lab up there and are increasingly supporting other areas of the execution, from asbestos management to geotechnical monitoring. Similar to other megaprojects we are able to simplify their delivery of scope technically and commercially. “
But while SOCOTEC has established itself as a valued partner of choice for these projects, it is not focused on the megaproject/construction market exclusively.
“There is certainly a current reduction on mega Projects” Hildick-Smith acknowledges. “There are some very public examples of mega projects being either cancelled, paused or descoped. Things like HS2 and Stonehenge are examples of this.”
Despite this reduction in new infrastructure, there is an increasing need to manage the existing Infrastructure. This is where SOCOTEC UK’s extensive offering comes into its own.
Adding to the Portfolio
As well as construction in the megaprojects space, SOCOTEC UK is heavily involved in existing asset projects.
“National Highways is not just a government agency for building new highways, it also maintains existing highways. The same is true of the rail network, and water companies,” Hildick-Smith points out.
“Various divisions of SOCOTEC UK support National Highways directly and indirectly in supporting those operations, be it through road testing, bridge maintenance, or other services.”
That list of services is expanding. Last month SOCOTEC acquired Impulse Geophysics, a major supplier directly and indirectly to National Highways for 4K video surveys and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR).
“It was an element we could not do in-house and we knew this capability was a major part of the offering to clients needing to maintain their highways assets” Hildick-Smith says. “When we bought them, it was not to add revenue and profit, but to bring those services in-house and thus offer a better-integrated service to clients.”
It is this approach that makes SOCOTEC stand out even during a period of consolidation in the sector.
“There is a lot of acquisition in the industry, often the purpose is to buy companies almost just to grow in size. Hildick-Smith points out. “Our strategy is about adding additional services to the buffet.”
However, Hildick-Smith is also adamant that SOCOTEC will not become a holding company for its acquisitions.
“If you have a simple model of buying quantity and they operate independently, that’s easy to do. But we acquire companies with the goal of fully integrating them over time to become one team,” he says. “We are one company with multiple services, not an umbrella organisation for multiple companies. As a result, the client gets a better more integrated output”
Building One Team
Achieving that vision and ensuring SOCOTEC remains a single team might be the company’s biggest challenge. Last year, the added a strategic role to its executive team to take on that challenge directly, in the form of a Business Integration Director.
“The operational owners are delivering day-to-day, so having someone there to proactively aid that integration was a big step for us,” Hildick-Smith says. “The process is completed over a bespoke period of time. We work with the new entity to understand what the best timeframes are for what we call a ‘hive up’ into the base business. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.”
SOCOTEC UK also places a great deal of importance on bringing the whole team together face-to-face, with a UK committee meeting every two months, and a UK-wide conference.
“Patrick Lencioni wrote something called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, it’s a triangle about how to develop a high-performing team” Hildick-Smith explains. “We have all gone through a similar team concept, and building trust is the bottom rung.”
A higher rung is investment in the company’s people, and this is an area where SOCOTEC UK excels, particularly around training and apprenticeships.
“Investing in all levels of training and apprenticeships is a huge part of our strategy,” Hildick-Smith says. “Over the last three years, we have put hundreds of people through various forms of technical and management training. I have personally done a Level 7 NVQ Management Apprenticeship alongside other members of the senior Socotec team. I learnt a lot from that, but the best part of it was building relationships with other managers and leaders from other Business Units. Building those bonds is key. We know have a great network to identify where we can work together to deliver for clients.”
Building and strengthening personal and team relationships is how a collection of acquisitions becomes a single team, working together to further drive growth even as the environment is challenging.
“There are headwinds in the economy, but as we go into 2025 and onwards, we know there will be a resurgence in infrastructure and construction projects, alongside an ever-increasing need to better manage the existing asset and infrastructure base,” Hildick-Smith says. “We will continue to partner with companies involved in that, supporting them with a growing range of services.”
