We proudly celebrated our 20-year anniversary on Friday 5th October. Our Managing Director, Phil Warren, discusses the history behind ETS and shares his journey to transforming the company into an award winning, multinational, data led, consultancy firm.
Energy Management Expert Phil Warren
“ETS was founded on Monday 5th October 1998 with a colleague having identified a gap in the market for impartial energy management consultants, with specialist engineering skills. We set out to make energy management and building services engineering more holistic, transparent and flexible to the needs of the client. Initially, we had two desks, two phones, one chair and a bedside cabinet to sit on, which was set-up in the front room of a ground floor flat that I had just renovated.
My colleague and I had previously worked for a large Contract Energy Management company that would sell long-term (10-20 years) energy management and maintenance contracts which were geared to reducing capital expenditure through improving operational inefficiencies. Energy management was not as popular then as electricity cost between 2 – 3 pence per kilowatt hour.
Our ethos was then as it is now, that the client should receive the full benefit of the efficiencies we achieve. ETS was built on the foundation that energy management should work in tandem with engineering, especially when reviewing the condition of plant equipment and maintenance costs. Opportunities to reduce costs in operational inefficiencies can often be further enhanced when you explore the causes of high energy consumption – i.e. incorrect control settings, user behaviour or dilapidations; possible refurbishment or upgrades to equipment that can improve energy efficiency. Our Operations Director, Phil Bilyard, discusses this in more detail here.
The company was originally named EMTEC before it was incorporated in 2005 and renamed Energy and Technical Services Ltd (ETS). Over the following years, we attracted the attention of a number of large facilities management companies and national retailers, including Sainsburys, ALDI and BNP Paribas Real Estate. During the company’s 20 years of existence, we developed an exceptional reputation as impartial, independent, reliable and trustworthy consultants. It is this reputation that has not only attracted new business, but also maintained an ever-expanding portfolio of loyal clients.
As the industry has changed, so has our services, ensuring our clients continue to receive value for money. Previously, we were very engineering led. Now we have evolved a more data-driven approach to energy management by employing our own in-house Data Analysts who support our engineering team.
We now have a number of highly sophisticated, bespoke software programmes and tools, developed in-house, to monitor, analyse and report energy data. In addition, our breadth of specialism and expertise has expanded and is continuing to grow as the industry evolves. As a result, ETS now employs over 25 full-time members of staff and has offices in Bristol, London, Leeds and Dublin to service our clients across the UK and Ireland.
Thanks to the dedication, commitment, honesty and hard work of our team, ETS has an important position in the market. Our reputation as market leaders has grown significantly and so has our influence within a number of professional registration bodies.
Our business is based on the long-standing relationships we have with our clients, some of which stretch back to when we started. Today, my team presented me with plaques commemorating the 20-year journey, including my first invoice and a copy of the first payment check we received.
After reviewing one of the first reports we delivered in 1998 and remembering the excitement of its production, I can proudly say, our core values are still present in the services we offer today and instilled throughout our working practices. Whilst my job has changed significantly from the days when I would visit plant rooms, my focus now is to ensure the team has a platform on which to excel. The capture, understanding and appropriate use of engineering and energy data is the future of building efficiency and we have positioned ourselves as market leaders in the field.
I’m so proud of our achievements and believe there is much yet to do.
Thank you to everyone here at ETS and our clients. It has been a blast! So, here’s to the next 20.”
Phil Warren, Managing Director