Compliance, sustainability, and efficiency are at the forefront of change in the built environment sector – and for Pettit Singleton Associates, they’ve been guiding principles for decades.
In this Gold Member interview feature, we speak to Jimmy Dobson, Managing Director at PSA, about how the consultancy is helping clients navigate net zero, compliance, and procurement challenges. From energy-efficient engineering to streamlining pre-qualification through Compliance Chain, Jimmy shares how PSA combines technical expertise with a forward-looking approach to industry standards.
To start us off, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about Pettit Singleton Associates and the services you provide across the built environment?
Hi, I’m Jimmy Dobson, Managing Director at Pettit Singleton Associates (PSA).
PSA is one of the North West’s most well-respected Building Services Engineering practices, with offices located in Preston and Carlisle.
Founded in 1989, we specialise in mechanical and electrical design, lead engineers, project management, energy consultancy, surveys, Clerk of Works, compliance and more – all in-house.
Recent projects we’ve worked on include; the expansion of the leisure venue Victoria Warehouse in Trafford, a nationwide upgrade of sprinklers for social housing, the first non-domestic Passivhaus (EnerPHit) compliant office refurbishment, £20m upgrade to Crow Wood’s Woodland Spa, and the new £20m over 55 accommodation development.
As well as our unrivalled experience in healthcare, having worked for most of the North West’s NHS Trusts, we also have strong ties to education, public sector, industrial, commercial, leisure, and defence sectors.
The key to our success and growth over the years has been our total commitment to quality and service that is reflected in the projects we deliver.
Sustainability sits at the heart of your consultancy offer – how does that influence the way you approach engineering and project delivery?
From an engineering point of view, sustainability is not something that’s new to us – we’ve been doing this for years. As building services engineers, considering energy and carbon emissions has always been part of our role.
We have had a great focus on energy and sustainability more recently in how we can guide our clients to a net zero future and energy savings. This is enhanced by the services our energy and sustainability manager can provide from determining a company’s carbon emissions to providing a road map in delivering practical outcomes.
The other part of sustainability is how we adapt our business practices and processes to meet these new expectations. This includes items such as having Teams meetings instead of face to face, limiting the use of vehicles, being more responsible with using technology to reduce our carbon footprint. We’ve encouraged the use of EV vehicles with financial incentives, we recycle the majority of our office waste, even though this is an additional cost to us. It shouldn’t just be about energy and carbon. It should be about the environment as a whole. All products that we have, such as any merchandise, equipment and furniture, we firstly seek it from sustainable sources and local suppliers. We ensure wherever possible our supply chain is local, reducing delivery miles.
How do you see industry expectations shifting around compliance, certification and accountability – particularly for specialist consultancies like yours?
I think there’s more onus on us now than there has been, we’re leading decisions on a lot more projects. This includes advising on insulation, carbon emissions, and EPC values, which can affect landlords’ rental values and project targets.
The biggest change is obviously the shift to electric systems and changes in building regulations to prevent or make it very difficult to use gas in new buildings. Although we are now moving to an electrified system, we can always investigate all the options. If we have to use gas as a client decision, then we’ll use gas, but we’ll look at offsetting the carbon emissions with other technologies.
We believe the industry needs big changes in offering some form of certification for signing off projects. Current self-certification schemes generally work, but in some cases, latent defects have arisen that affect life safety – Grenfell being a notable example.
Independent clerks of work should monitor and sign off on projects to help contractors achieve compliance. This “critical friend” role has been missed and often removed from project budgets over the years.
You’ve recently joined Compliance Chain as a Gold Level Member. What made you decide to pursue this membership level, and what benefits do you hope it brings you as a company?
Compliance Chain Gold membership demonstrates to clients, both current and new, our compliance with CAS, which aligns with what we’ve been saying about the need for standardisation in the industry. With Compliance Chain being a SSIP registered member, we benefit from two-way mutual recognition with all other registered member schemes, which addresses one of our main frustrations about having to complete multiple different SSIP assessments.
The Gold Level membership gives us credibility as a specialist consultancy and should help reduce the duplication we’ve been experiencing. Instead of filling out 17 different sections for different schemes, having this recognised certification should streamline the procurement process. It’s exactly what we’ve been calling for – one assessment that gets recognised across multiple clients and projects.
What value do you see in recognised certifications like CAS and SSIP – both in terms of internal operations and how you’re perceived by clients or partners?
Recognised schemes that assess the competency of companies play a vital role in ensuring quality assurance and governance over the industry. So, on that side it provides the credibility and visibility we require to showcase how competent we are.
From an internal operations point of view, there is an industry wide problem at the moment with the repetition of these processes and having so many different schemes. It puts a lot of pressure on our admin team and creates inefficiencies.
These recognised frameworks are aiming to solve that problem and we can see the benefit of that for our business.
How do you see digital tools like Compliance Chain changing the way you approach compliance pre-qualification and supplier visibility in the months ahead?
Digital tools like Compliance Chain are exactly what we need to address the frustrations we’ve been having with the procurement process. The platform allows you to instantly verify third-party certifications and see supplier certification and compliance status, including the Common Assessment Standard, in one profile. This is a game-changer for us because instead of having to fill out multiple forms and wait for responses, we can demonstrate our compliance status instantly.
The live dashboards show expiration dates and downloadable certification for easier pre-qualification and due diligence, which should significantly reduce the time we spend on the administrative side of tendering. Rather than having to explain our quality management system in detail every time, clients can see at a glance that we’re compliant with CAS and SSIP standards.
What particularly appeals to us is the centralised approach – keeping track of the full supply chain from one platform. This aligns with our view that there needs to be standardisation in the industry. Instead of dealing with multiple different systems and forms, having everything consolidated in one place should save us considerable time and energy.
Looking ahead, this kind of digital transformation should help address the archaic systems we’ve been dealing with and move us toward the standardised, efficient processes we’ve been calling for in the industry.
What challenges do you think consultancies and service providers like yours often face when it comes to demonstrating capability during the tendering or procurement process?
The main challenge is the time it takes to complete the tenders and demonstrating the wide and diverse skills that we possess. We try really hard on the quality sections to showcase our capability and value. The lack of standardisation in the industry isn’t helpful.
For an SME business like ourselves with highly specialised engineers and significant investment in software and training, it is sometimes difficult to show this in the limited word-count available in a submission. It’s also difficult to ascertain what the reader is able to understand when varying assessors can interpret submissions differently.
As your business continues to grow, how important is it to have scalable, standardised approaches to compliance across your range of services and projects?
Business processes are key as you grow. The needs of a team of two are completely different to those of 42 or 202 staff. It’s the standard approaches that make it work. As you grow you need more processes, more data analysis, more data capture.
When a company reaches a certain size, scalable processes are vital for a business to maintain its quality. When you have more people, you have more layers, therefore increased processes are key in delivering company values and setting standards.
We have gained ISO accreditation more recently, as we wanted to standardise a lot of processes, procedures and PQQs to save time, energy and to maintain our quality. We believe it’s worth the hard work to create better processes to improve the quality of our output as we grow.
What advice would you give to similar consultancies thinking about strengthening their compliance position or looking to stand out more clearly to main contractors and public sector buyers?
I think it’s quite clear that if you want to improve, grow and work with certain clients, the advice would be that you need to go through the process and achieve the compliance.
If you’re in a position where you can spend time, money and focus on a standard procedure that’s set out by others, I would always try to follow that rather than trying to make your own, as these would also be registered, accredited and recognisable by other organisations.
Pettit Singleton Associates are one of many companies strengthening their position with Compliance Chain Gold Membership. To learn more about achieving Gold, take a look at our Supplier Solutions page here.
As Business Development Manager, Richard has the primary focus of onboarding suppliers to ensure they are fully compliant to work in the public sector.
