A year on, Had Fab continues powering the energy transition through cutting-edge technology and a growing workforce 

Since its inception in 1993, Had Fab has established itself as one of the UK’s leading structural engineering and metal fabrication companies, thanks to its highly skilled team of multidisciplinary experts. Operating from its head office and facilities in East Lothian, Scotland, and following multimillion-pound investments across its four sites, Had Fab boasts unparalleled facilities and equipment. Nearly a year after our last conversation, we catch up with Greg Scott, Managing Director. 

“The past eight months have been a period of rapid growth for us, expanding from 120 employees to 198 today. As part of this increased capacity, we have strengthened our supervisory and management capabilities and made substantial investments in training and competency development. In terms of projects, we recently received a major contract award from the Wood Group (Wood) and J Murphy & Sons (Murphy) on behalf of SSEN, which encompasses a significant portion of the new infrastructure program under the Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment. This large-scale project demands a huge increase in our output capacity, which is why we have brought in so many new team members in the past year. Additionally, we are engaged in discussions to support frameworks with other DNOs to support network expansion across the wider UK transmission and distribution infrastructure. While the rolling forecast looks promising, it requires careful planning and execution to ensure we maintain our quality, delivery integrity, and commitment to our people, who are our most valuable asset,” he begins. 

Investing in people 

Workforce development is crucial to the success of Had Fab’s operations and its ability to execute projects to the highest standards. As such, continuous investment in its people is one of the company’s top priorities, which is why Had Fab has expanded its staff and even created new teams. “Our structured competency programmes demonstrate how much more value our employees can add as their skills become more flexible. We also provide extensive supervisory and management training to support the growing number of personnel on the shop floor. As the contracting landscape becomes more complex in terms of commercial negotiations, we have strengthened our commercial team by adding quantity surveyors and project managers. In essence, we have created a project management office and invested heavily in our estimating and bids and proposals team. This growth has necessitated the creation of a new office in a new catchment area near Glagow, which currently houses around 12-to-14 people and is expected to grow further. In response to the increasing demand for our substation product line, we have doubled the size of our design team, going from six to 12 members, and we have brought in people with diverse skills to enhance our capabilities. This allows us to provide the volume and breadth of services necessary to keep pace with our growth opportunities,” Greg reveals. 

Alongside training and developing its valued workforce, Had Fab has made investments in new equipment and machinery to boost production. “We have acquired a new laser machine to produce our plates as well as four new angle lines supplied by Ficep, which create the sections making up the transmission towers. These angle lines will nearly double our production capability for that particular product,” says Greg. 

In the same vein, the company has recently implemented new enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. “Provided by Zoho, our new CRM system is essential for managing our commercial programme. Pipeline management is documented and managed in real time through the CRM, allowing us to access live, up-to-date information on project progress. Additionally, we can perform all sorts of analytics to assess which product lines are contributing, the value segmentation of jobs, and their current status in the process. Instead of relying on someone to create a report, we can log into the CRM and view the information in real time, which has significantly boosted our efficiency. 

“Meanwhile, implementing the broader ERP system, designed to control the entire quote-to-cash process, is a more complex undertaking, though we are nearing its completion. We have partnered with StruMIS, an ERP company specialising in the steel fabrication industry. Their system allows us to integrate our commercial forecasting with our production planning more seamlessly. This means less human intervention and double data entry, resulting in a streamlined process that enables us to produce analytics and forecast potential bottlenecks or issues well in advance. While there is still work to be done in rolling this out and bringing it to full conclusion, it has already proven to be very beneficial for us,” he continues. 

Prestigious project portfolio 

With a bolstered workforce and modernised processes, thanks to the adoption of cutting-edge technology and systems, Had Fab is well-positioned to undertake prestigious and high-stakes projects. In fact, the company was selected to support one of the major network operators, SSEN, through its direct customers, Wood and Murphy. “This project involves approximately 500 transmission towers, valued at £100 million, to be phased over three years. We have contracts with both Wood and Murphy, who supply the wider solution to SSEN for the Spittal – Loch Buidhe – Beauly 400kV transmission line that will bring offshore wind power to distribution centres. The new tower design has been developed to accommodate heavier conductors, and therefore necessitates reinforcing the towers, each weighing 50 tonnes, to prevent cable sagging. This approach allows us to reduce the number of towers needed. This new design has undergone extensive testing, and we are now tasked with producing approximately 500 towers over the next three years. Given that we are producing more of the same product consistently, this contract award provides us with stability and planning visibility, which simplifies operations planning and material management. It also allows us to maximise the efficiency of our new machines. This scheme represents a shift towards higher volume production, in contrast to our previous work, which was typically project-driven and made to order,” Greg concludes. 

As Had Fab continues to innovate and expand, its commitment to workforce development and technology positions it for sustained success in a rapidly evolving industry landscape.  

www.hadfab.co.uk