We’ve moved our entire offshore wind contract team from Bromley to join our New Markets team in The City of London.
Since establishing our New Markets team in Threadneedle Street in the square mile four months ago, we’ve been making great strides into innovative and less-established clean energy technologies like energy from waste, biomass, and geothermal.
Now our entire offshore wind contracts team has moved from Bromley to join our office in The City of London. It’s a perfect marriage between offshore wind, one of our long-term pillars, and the New Markets division which is tasked with exploring and developing new markets.
We’re already seeing the benefits of bringing us closer, not only to each other but to our customers too.
I sat down with Donna Ellcock, Director of Offshore wind contract recruitment, and Simon Cottenham from our New Markets team to discuss what the move means for the industry.
What does the move bring to Taylor Hopkinson?
Donna – We are now closer to our clients and we are closer to our contractors in London which makes meetings easier. We could now meet for lunch or over coffee whereas before it would take us a lot more time travelling in and out of central London from Bromley. This gives us more face-to-face time which translates into stronger interactions with our customers.
We’re also closer to the major airports so it’s easier to travel in and out of Europe. We’re making these trips more and more as we grow into the continent.
Being co-located with our new markets team gives us the opportunity to collaborate together and share ideas. Although the New Markets team is relatively new to Taylor Hopkinson they have a great depth of recruitment experience in other energy markets.
Simon – Being a new division within Taylor Hopkinson in the city of London meant that, until now, we were operating as a small team. Now that we share a space with the contracts team, from a collaboration point of view, we’re able to work together which helps us get unstuck whenever we need to. From a cultural point of view, we’re now much more integrated into the company as a whole, which is a massive positive for us.
How do these new markets differ from more established ones?
Simon – Over the past few months we have been setting up new markets to help us diversify and build on the pillars of the business.
The offshore wind contracts has been a massive part of the business for the past nine years as well as the offshore wind and solar team in Glasgow.
The New Markets team is exploring new areas which will allow us to grow at the rate that we envisage over the next five years.
We’re working with less-established, but growing, industries such as energy from waste, biomass, hydropower, and geothermal which all fall under the clean energy remit. We are also looking into energy efficiency and efficient distributed units in London residential complexes.
All three of us in the Newmarket team came from a conventional energy background so a lot of the clients are the same. For example, geothermal, concentrated solar, and biomass all use steam turbines so the technology and the people are the same for these technologies as they are for traditional energy industries.
The challenge, of course, is that developing these kinds of markets is quite exploratory in nature. We can research markets, only to find that they don’t yet have sufficient size to support the growth we’re looking for, so we need to pull back out and move into another area so that’s what we’ve been looking at for the last 4 months.
How has the move impacted the company so far?
Donna – Having more recruitment professionals around you is always going to be a positive thing. It brings more perspective, especially from those in different industries.
It’s interesting being in Bank too. Being surrounded by other professionals from different worlds brings a sense of gravity to our work and underscores the importance of what we do. It’s very businesslike.
Our office building here is wonderful and we have a lot of perks. We have a gym with a free personal trainer, spinning classes and to balance it out we get free cakes on Friday.
It’s a really nice space to work. There’s even a shoe shiner every Wednesday to keep us looking sharp. And the support from the rest of the teams in the building is brilliant. The receptionists go out of their way to make us feel welcome – we even joined them for their Christmas party. There is a great community spirit here.
Simon – Myself, Iulian, and Leo have all worked together for a number of years now and we have developed certain ways of working. Now that we have Donna and the contracts team, we have somebody else with a different perspective to share ideas with.
What have been your major achievements for 2017?
Donna – It’s been our best year financially with year-on-year growth. We surpassed our targets by more than we expected and we have more contractors than ever.
The New Markets team are on-track to do exactly what we set out to do. We’ve established a great platform in The City to launch us into a successful 2018 with further growth.
How do you plan to grow the London team in 2018?
We have a clear and definite focus on growth so we’re always looking for new team members of all levels and we plan to add two new team members in January. We are always looking for new talent to join us.
We are open to young people who have the core skills to become the future management of Taylor Hopkinson. And we’re open to experienced professionals who can bring their own expertise to the team.
We’re bringing new talent into Taylor Hopkinson, not only in recruitment but in operations as well.
