A FAST, agile, response has proven to be more important for businesses and organisations in the last 12 months than ever before.
Entrepreneur Lee Grears (pictured) has always been ahead of the curve. He recognised long ago that combining highly-trained teams who take pride in delivering quality work with a quick turnaround of customer service is a formula for success.
That’s why when he set up his company exactly ten years ago he called it Responsive.
With bases in Cumbria and Manchester and operating throughout the UK, Responsive is well-known for its fast, reliable response to provide testing, welding, and painting inspection services to a range of sectors including nuclear, marine, petrochemical, engineering and construction industries.
The company is highly respected for providing industry-leading services in both destructive and non-destructive testing, mechanical testing and material analysis.
Like any industry, it’s a competitive market and it’s Responsive’s high quality of work and the speed of its response which makes Lee’s company stand out from the crowd and has helped it continue to thrive in what for many has been a challenging 12 months.
Neal Gilbert, managing director of REV, has 40 years of experience in the steam turbines, compressors and associated industries.
Neal founded REV eight years ago in response to a need in the market for a multi-disciplined problem solving team of highly skilled engineers who could work across multiple industries and technologies across the UK and also offshore in countries such as India, Pakistan and Brazil.
REV provides support to the power generation industries, including at waste-to-energy plants, with its team’s specialist knowledge of Steam Turbine – Generator and Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems.
When Neal needed a fast response to a project in Milton Keynes, and others were unable to help in the timescale, he called in Responsive for the first time. REV and Responsive have not looked back.
Neal said: “That first job was working long hours in a difficult environment on the hot side of the boiler.
“Responsive met all our needs, they got two members of their team on site very quickly and carried out a really high quality job.
“We have turned to them ever since and have worked with them on five different occasions already.
“The team at Responsive are proactive and really get involved with our teams. I can’t speak highly enough of them.
“The two things which matter most to me when working with other companies is their responsiveness and their quality of work. Responsive definitely deliver on both.”
Taking action quickly is at the core of Responsive’s DNA which reflects Lee’s approach to business.
A true entrepreneur he thrives on fast-paced activity which explains why he has set up a series of start-ups in his first ten years in business.
“I really enjoy everything associated with a start-up and setting up a new business. It’s the entrepreneur side in me.
“From the creativity of the blue sky thinking to the challenge of getting everything done at pace, it’s what I enjoy most about business.
“You have got to act fast, be able to adapt quickly, and you have to throw everything at it to make it work,” said Lee.
Responsive’s latest start-up – Flawed Ltd – was born out of the Covid pandemic when Lee felt he needed to add a pioneering product to his business portfolio.
“At the start of the pandemic we wanted to be able to offer products as well as services, to give us that extra diversity and resilience at a time when there was less call on the services side of the business,” he said.
The concept was simple, and yet genius.
To train their teams and to prove that testing works, industries need to use products which have defects built into them.
As testing and training specialists who know precisely what industries require, Responsive is ideally positioned to manufacture those products.
“Non-destructive testing operatives need to renew their qualifications every five years. They need products to work on which have known defects,” said Lee.
Flawed was born. And one side of its business which has already developed is its ability to manufacture products to help replicate scenarios on sensitive industrial sites – such as at Sellafield or in marine environments for the oil and gas industry – and to test them in a non-hazardous environment, to save time, money, and reduce risk to people when ultimately tested on site. “It’s going really well,” said Lee.
Setting up start-ups takes Lee back to the moment ten years ago when after working for such giants of industry as BAE Systems in Barrow, and TSP Engineering (formerly Tata Steel) in Workington, he decided to go it alone and set up his own business, initially carrying out welding inspections.
Ten years on, fuelled by Lee’s constant drive and ambition Responsive has grown into an award-winning operation made up of six different businesses: Responsive Ltd, Responsive Non Destructive Testing Ltd, Responsive Mechanical Testing Ltd, Responsive Training Services Ltd, Responsive (Manchester) Ltd, and Flawed.
The range of clients in different industries across various parts of the UK who value Responsive’s fast, quality service continues to grow.
Calder Industrial Materials, based in Chester, is the UK’s leading supplier of lead sheet and lead engineering products to the nuclear, aerospace, defence, industrial, marine, oil & gas, security, healthcare, roofing and research markets.
Servicing customers throughout the globe, Calder Industrial Materials provides mission critical solutions with a commitment to reliability, quality and service.
Sellafield is among Calder Industrial Materials’ high profile clients where its product is used to ensure the required shielding for the safe transportation of waste flasks.
Frank Lynch, Commercial Director at Calder Shielding, said: “The integrity of that product is paramount and we know we can trust Responsive to carry out the required testing.
“Lee and the team are very professional, knowledgeable and experienced and provide an excellent service.”
A Member of The British Institute of Non Destructive Testing, Responsive’s expertise has been acknowledged through awards including Best Small Business at the Britain’s Energy Coast Business Cluster Awards, 2016 and Best Professional Services Provider, in-Cumbria Business Awards 2019.
But Lee has no intention of stopping there. The company’s tenth anniversary this month could well be the milestone which marks Responsive’s further expansion.
Increasing its range of work in the renewables sector to support the UK’s move to Net Zero is a clear ambition for Lee and Responsive.
And given the success of Responsive’s Manchester operation, Lee is already looking at other areas of the UK where Responsive could set up operations to support sectors in those areas.
“We are always looking for the right opportunity looking to extend our footprint and considering different geographies and different markets where our services are most in demand.
“We have got the model and we have shown that it works really well, so why not replicate it in different parts of the UK?”
It’s very much a case of watch this space, which Lee’s fast pace has ensured has been the case for much of the company’s first ten years.
But wherever Responsive’s expansion takes him and the team, when it comes to what drives Lee, the answer lies much closer to home with wife Lisa and children Evan, Rory and Charlie.
“It’s always been about providing a sustainable future for my family. That was the motivation ten years ago, and that’s still the motivation today.”
