Ahead of the filing of our latest payment practice statistics, Neil Washington, our finance director, provides a breakdown of our results. Late payments are a thorn in the side of smaller firms in the construction supply chain. That’s why we have placed an ongoing focus on doing all we can to reduce the time we take to pay our suppliers. Quite rightly, the issue has attracted negative headlines in the construction industry and large companies are now required to report on their payment practices every six months. So, with the deadline for businesses to file their latest available data falling this week, some may be nervous about what the statistics will reveal. Here at Novus, however, we’re happy to report that our commitment to reducing payment times is continuing to bear fruit. The data for the first half of the year shows that we took an average of 29 days to pay our subcontractors. This is an improvement on the already high standard we set ourselves for the same period last year, which was 30 days. To put this in context, according to Construction News’ latest analysis of payment-practice reports, the industry’s largest contractors took an average of 43 days to pay suppliers. It’s not just there where we’ve continued to make improvements. We also now pay 57% of our invoices within 30 days, up from 52% for the first half of 2018, while the proportion of payments outside of terms are down year-on-year. Of course, our work doesn’t stop here and we will continue to focus on this issue. Contractors and their supply chains are dependent on each other’s success. Prompt payment means that subcontractors can maintain healthy cashflow levels, increasing the likelihood of them accepting more work and consistently carrying out quality jobs. Late payment can also have a massive impact on cashflow, increasing the likelihood of insolvency. At a time of skills shortages, reduced access to labour and economic uncertainty, it’s vital that bigger players in the industry are doing all they can to ease the burden smaller firms face.

Novus Property Solutions has won a £200,000 contract to deliver repairs to social housing properties owned by City of York Council. The work will see Novus complete internal and external decoration and repairs to around 320 homes across the city, including works to doors and windows and replacements in houses and blocks of flats. Novus’ work forms part of the City of York Council’s ongoing maintenance programme for housing repairs across 4,650 of its homes – half of the organisation’s total housing stock. Nick Haigh, operations manager for York and Leeds at Novus, said: “Following the launch of our Yorkshire office last year, we’ve succeeded in securing new client relationships and growing work with existing clients. “We have a deep understanding of how to deliver housing repair programmes on a national, regional and local level. This experience, coupled with our approach to partnership working with clients to ensure that our teams reflect the values of local authorities and housing associations, is helping us make a name for the business in Yorkshire.” Last year Novus’s Yorkshire team invested £20,000 in a CSR project for Leeds Action to Create Homes (Latch) where the team refurbished a home to house a homeless person in the city.

Novus Property Solutions has won a £1 million contract to deliver a two-storey extension at Excel Academy in Stoke-on-Trent. The work will see Novus create the new 6,233 sq ft extension which will include six new multi-purpose classrooms. Work includes internal fixtures to the classrooms as well as creating a new covered stairwell as a separate addition. Excel Academy is Stoke-on-Trent’s most oversubscribed school. The extension, which was granted planning consent in November 2018, is designed to increase capacity and improve the flow of students moving around the school between lessons. Work on the extension will be carried out during term time with measures in place to avoid disruption to the school and over the summer ahead of completion in September 2019. Dean Povey, Build Senior Operations Manager at Novus, said: “Excel Academy is a hugely popular school in Stoke-on-Trent and the new classrooms are designed to ensure it can meet current and future student capacity. “Academies, by their nature, have to define their own proposition to parents and students and the quality of learning environments is a huge part of that. Our extensive experience in education means we know how to create spaces that help pupils and teachers to achieve their best, with works specially planned to avoid any disruption.” Stephen Goodwin, Head of Support Services at Excel Academy, said: “We’re incredibly proud of the success of the academy and due to its popularity, we’ve recently had to introduce temporary mobile classrooms to accommodate students. The new extension is designed to provide us with much-needed teaching space and be a long-term solution to the high demand. “Novus’s expertise in the education sector makes it the perfect partner to be delivering this project.”

Contractor Novus has completed a project to build Britain’s smallest Premier Inn hotel as part of an initiative to help offer skills to people living with disabilities. The new three-room hotel is a partnership project with Hereward College in Coventry and will be used as a training facility and provide employment for young people with disabilities in the area. Novus, which works alongside Whitbread to refurbish all of its Premier Inn hotels across the country, built three en-suite bedrooms, a fully functional reception area, corridor and linen room as part of the project. The facility will enable the young people to learn the skills required to gain permanent employment in the hospitality sector. Young people taking part in the programme will also have the opportunity to undertake supported internships with the hotel chain, building on the success of a similar scheme in Shropshire with Derwen College where 15 students have gone on to gain employment with Premier Inn. Alan Nixon, CEO at Novus Property Solutions, said: “Through our partnerships with major clients such as Whitbread we’ve delivered a range of social value projects that have lasting impacts in the towns and communities where we work. “The facility at Hereward College will provide a fantastic opportunity for people living with disabilities and additional needs to gain real skills to support their futures.” Simon Ewins, managing director at Premier Inn, said: “We welcome people from all walks of life and from every corner of the world, and it is only right our workforce reflects this.“We recognise that a diverse and inclusive culture brings significant business benefits and ultimately leads to better business performance and working alongside Novus on this project will enable us to benefit from this.” Paul Cook, Principal at Hereward College said: “We are delighted with the work carried out by Novus to create the Premier Inn training facility at Hereward College. It's great to work alongside businesses who support our ambition to get more people with disabilities into meaningful employment. “ The new training facility will mean that students will be able to gain work experience, learn specific job roles and gain confidence before stepping into the workplace.”

We are proud to announce record sales of £155.8m in 2018 (2017: £148.6m) alongside pre-tax profits of £5.536m (2017: £5.441m) reporting five years of unbroken growth. We operate from 27 locations across the UK, with our head office being in Stoke-On-Trent and have earmarked £2m of our profit to support new investment in 2019. Planned projects include several digital transformation initiatives. Being a leading provider of maintenance and construction services to the social housing, university retail and hotel sectors, we are developing solutions that will integrate our IT systems with clients’ estate management software and property databases to automate internal processes. We have stepped up our investment into apprenticeships and trainees last year, employing 91 (2017: 65) and are funding the training of 20 quantity surveyors as we seek to address specific skill gaps in the business and  the wider industry’s talent pool. We employ 1,000 people nationally. To celebrate our fifth birthday in 2018 we delivered a nationwide, community-led campaign called ‘The Big Five’ donating £100,000 in time, labour and materials to support five community projects across the UK. The projects were just five of 340 social value initiatives we led last year, positively impacting 14,659 lives.  Our achievements were recognised in 2018 when we were presented with a National Award for Educational Partnership by Business in the Community (BITC). Earlier this year, we were listed among the top five fastest payers to its supply chain with an average of only 26 days against an industry average of 43 days. Five months into the current financial year, we are targeting further sustainable growth and have 90 per cent of our 2019 turnover target already secured. In February 2019, Alan Nixon was appointed the new Chief Executive Officer. Alan, was an existing member of the board and has worked with us – Novus was a part of Seddon Group until 2013 – for more than 30 years. Commenting on the 2018 financial results, Nixon said: “In a market beset with uncertainty, we had another year to be proud of. We grew revenues and profits sustainably as we achieved our business plan, while significantly strengthening our balance sheet so that we can continue to invest in innovation this year and over the long-term. “Novus, under the guidance of its chairman and fourth generation of the Seddon family, Stuart Seddon, was committed to being a responsible contractor that gave something back to its communities, long before it became a requirement in contract bids. We’re pleased to report strong data on our CSR investment alongside our trading performance.      “Our BITC Award and recent commendation for industry-leading payment practices all stem from our culture, which is rooted in being a family-owned business. Ensuring the principles that stem from this continue to guide how we operate, even as we scale the business, is an important objective for myself and the board.  “Looking ahead, the market remains tight. But, with our customer-centric approach and spend on exciting new digital innovations, we’re well placed to continue on our path of manageable growth.”

Manchester City weren’t the only ones to return from Wembley with a trophy last week, with the Novus Big Five – our flagship 2018 charity project – being named winner of the National Building Award for community engagement at the iconic stadium on 22nd May. Hosted at Wembley, the National Building Awards celebrate industrious, hardworking and enterprising construction businesses across the country. We were one of four finalists in the community engagement category, with judges commending our clear commitment to CSR on an ongoing basis at all levels of the business. The Big Five campaign was a milestone initiative conceived to celebrate our fifth anniversary by giving something back to the communities we work in.  The campaign saw us canvas nominations for worthy projects in five locations across the UK, which each benefited from a £20,000 refurbishment project. The project united our entire business towards a single CSR goal with projects selected to meet our corporate social responsibility (CSR) goal of helping to change lives. The award win is further evidence that our initiatives are some the best, most engaging and transformative in the sector. Each refurbishment project was chosen by our own team of judges and included refurbishments to a maternity ward, a house for a homeless person, two community centres and a rehabilitation centre for military veterans. You can read more about each of the projects here