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A Thrilling Epoch (1969-1980s)
The year 1969 was the 50th anniversary of the incorporation of James Kilpatrick and Son as a small provincial limited company. By a happy coincidence, it was also the year the company finally evolved into a fully fledged multinational concern, offering complete electrical engineering services worldwide.
This was the outcome of the merger on January 6 with the British Insulated Callender’s Cables group, probably the biggest electrically orientated group in the world. In the reorganisation that followed, Kilpatrick was given the leadership of an electrical company within a construction and engineering group headed by Balfour Beatty. Mr Shaw was confirmed as chief executive and appointed chairman.
The result was a major expansion for Kilpatrick, mainly because it merged with the cabling business previously carried out by BICC. Workforce and turnover were increased to some 6000 and £21 million respectively.
Overseas, many more doors were opened for business because of BICC’s representation and reputation around the world. Financially, Kilpatrick could feel more secure than ever with the group’s immense assets behind it.
At the same time, the contribution the company could make was clearly recognised by the leading role assigned to it in electrical work. This point was stressed in a talk to senior members of the staff by J.D.D. Shaw, who told them: "We can surely accept it as a compliment to past performance and effort that we have been given this further opportunity to prove ourselves in the larger spheres and areas which these arrangements open up....This is a thrilling epoch in the Kilpatrick story."
Throughout the following decade the company was to show how well it could respond to such a challenge. In the early ‘seventies however, most of the senior staff who for 30 years and more had built the company, retired, including Mr Shaw in June 1971 after 50 years of service, 34 of which as chief executive.
Unfortunately, the general manager and director, Tom A. Scott, who had played such a significant part in the development of the company, died in March 1970.
On July 1, 1971, the merger was developed one step further by changing the company name to Balfour Kilpatrick, since it was considered that there would be commercial advantage in sharing in the group image. But the company did not reach its present fully integrated form until 1975, when six divisions were established with Tom Appleton as chief executive and D.H. Rooney as chairman. Three of these divisions Northern, Controls and Instrumentation and Special Projects remained at River Cart Walk in Paisley.
Even in the early post-merger years, as the company adapted to its new resources and responsibilities, it continued to grow by taking over other companies. Two of these, Mackenzie and Moncur of Edinburgh and J. Jeffreys of Teddington, specialised in heating, ventilation and air conditioning, while another Shaw-Petrie of Glasgow, was a pipework contractor. They enriched still further the formidable range of expertise within Balfour Kilpatrick and strengthened its hand in the growing market of multi-service contracts.
Throughout this period of rapid growth and reorganisation, the company was pressing ahead to new markets and larger projects. The clearest single challenge facing British industry at that time was to win a share of the huge but specialised market created by the exploitation of North Sea Oil. Balfour Kilpatrick was one of the first firms to seize the opportunity. Contracts began to flow in, for work on modules and in construction yards at Ardersier, Methil and Ardyne Point. And from 1974 on, Balfour Kilpatrick had established for itself a major role in assisting the development of the larger oilfields, including Forties, Thistle, Piper, Beryl and Ninian.
Onshore, Balfour Kilpatrick was demonstrating its capacity to handle the largest projects anywhere in the world. For example, a £20 million contract for the Ince power station near Liverpool was matched in value by another for telecommunications in Indonesia, begun in 1975 and completed four years later.
Power stations were also equipped overseas, both in South Africa and Australia, while in Nigeria three entire townships were electrified. At home, the major contracts of the ‘seventies included many major teaching hospitals.
These were only a few of the massive, high-value projects the company was now undertaking. They are creamed from a long joblist that covered many of the best-known commercial and public buildings of the ‘seventies, most types of industry, power transmissions and distribution and highways. The continual expansion that, with hindsight, seems to have been the destiny of the Kilpatrick company was reflected by 180 in a workforce of 8500 and a turnover of £140 million.
One side-effect of expansion was that the old headquarters at River Cart Walk in Paisley proved too small to house three divisions in comfort and the one to move was Special Projects. It happened that BICC still owned the property formerly occupied by Scottish Cables in Glasgow Road, Renfrew and this offered the solution to the overcrowding problem. The office building was refurbished with some elegance and the Special Projects Division moved there in April 1979.
Balfour Kilpatrick has entered the ‘eighties as probably the largest electrical contractor in the UK, perhaps in the world. It is certainly one of the most advanced in its field anywhere. But it has one other characteristic worth noting: among its workforce an exceptionally high proportion have long service of 30 years or more. This seems to prove that the business started by James Stevenson Kilpatrick has achieved something more than a merely commercial success.
