Terminal Five, the biggest freestanding building in the UK, has finally been opened.

Completing Europe’s largest construction project involved mind-boggling quantities of electrical cabling, stone slabs, glass and escalators.

Such a mammoth construction site demanded high-level logistics to ensure all building materials were delivered to the right place at the right time.

Mark Abraham is the finance director of Wilson James, the company that orchestrated the complex dance of articulated lorries to ensure that Terminal Five (T5) opened on time.

“When we started work on the site, we were told that we should work on the basis that there would be an articulated load of materials arriving on the site every 42 seconds for three years,” he says.

Nor was it as easy as simply unloading trucks. The loads also had to be delivered to the right part of the site. “The building is the size of 27 football pitches,” says Abraham. “Moving big, unwieldy items like escalators around that kind of space was certainly challenging.”

Wilson James is owned by three businessmen who established the firm over a decade ago. Each owner has a specialisation, but the common thread is that the company provides managed teams of skilled labour to different industries.
The oldest part of Wilson James is the construction logistics business that was involved in the building of T5.

The logistics operation also manages the removal of waste from the site, provides canteens for the workers and even runs the toilet facilities.

“We had up to 200 people working at one time on T5 just to ensure that all the materials arrived on-site on time and to take the waste off-site. We also ran
canteens feeding up to 3,000 builders,” says Abraham.

But, security services are the largest part of Wilson James’ business and the BBC is the company’s largest client. “When you visit an office and see a uniformed security man on the door, there is a good chance that they work for Wilson James,” says Abraham.

He says the key to managing staff across a range of different industries is an investment in the best technology to ensure the firm delivers good quality and profitable customer service.

Business in the blood

Abraham is now putting into practice long-standing ideals; having always wanted to work in business, he studied finance and accountancy at university.

“My interests at school were economics and maths so studying accounting meant that I was following the subjects I had enjoyed at school,” he says.

Abraham inherited his interest in business from his family. “My family comes from Swansea and there is a high street in one district where a member of my family ran pretty much every shop: the butcher, the jeweller, the green grocer, the florist and two pubs,” he says.

Abraham’s interest in hands-on business influenced his decision to become a chartered accountant.

“I have always chosen to work in the service sector because these businesses are flexible, customer-driven, agile and fun places to work,” he says.

T5 may now be finished but there are plans for a major redevelopment of other Heathrow terminals and Wilson James is currently tendering to take on the management of the construction logistics.

Running a series of logistics businesses efficiently is about operating the best management systems. For example, consolidating vehicle loads helps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

When Abraham joined the company five years ago, the business was about half the size it is now, generating sales of £35m compared with £70m today.

“We’ve had some growing pains, so we’ve had to expand the IT systems to reflect the current complexity and size of the business,” he says.

“My involvement with the company’s IT systems has been about finding the right software and managing the roll-out of products across the business.”

When he first joined the firm, managing the IT was about making the best of the software that already existed. Abraham oversaw the launch of a web-based internal procurement system.

“The building sites we operate buy a phenomenal amount of stuff, which could be sand bags, a mini-bus or even a new crane,” he says.

The procurement system removed the need for an overflow of paperwork and telephone calls, as well as providing an up-to-date price list.

Abraham also overhauled the company’s payroll system because Wilson James employs about 1,900 staff.

Once the nuts and bolts of the system had been sorted, Abraham moved onto more ambitious projects.

The company has recently made its biggest IT purchase with the decision to implement WorkPlace Systems, a software tool for managing the roster of the company’s employees working at different sites.

“It is important to ensure that we are providing the people to meet our contractual requirements, but not exceeding them,” he says. “The system gives us a clear view of what’s going on every day.”

One other bonus of the scheduling system is that it is web-based, allowing Wilson James to circumnavigate a significant problem ­ almost all their employees work at other companies.

The technology helps ensure staff with the right level of training are working at the right place. And managing staff as efficiently as possible makes a big difference to the company’s profitability.

“For example, if you deliver 26 people rather than 25 people to a contract, it can be the difference between making money that day or not,” says Abraham.

While the right IT systems are essential to profit making, Abraham says his job as the company’s finance director ­ along with managing the software budget ­ means he sometimes finds himself in a conflict of interest. Running a low-margin business means every expense has to be justified.

“You know it’s the right thing to do, you know it will bring efficiency, but it can be difficult to prove,” he says.

For example, the company recently decided to swap to Cisco routers because the previous technology had made it increasingly difficult for Wilson James staff working off-site to get reliable access to corporate systems.

“It was difficult to justify the return on this investment, but it has made huge improvement for our staff,” says Abraham. “The unreliable connections were bringing inefficiency into our business.”

Abraham is confident that the recent IT investments will help the company take on its next big challenge: managing the building logistics for the London Olympics in 2012.

In five years’ time, Abraham hopes to have stories to tell about the building logistics of a project of such a massive scale that it might make managing Terminal Five seem like overseeing a barn conversion.