History

“Our history is made up of the people who have given their positive contributions and precious time to our journey.” — Peter Shone, Managing Director, JPCS

JPCS was founded in 1993 by Peter Shone and James Clarke, originally as a footway slurry sealing operation. Peter and James were on a mission to transform footway surfacing from a rather “scruffy” industry, into something much more high profile, offering excellent value and quality of service, as well as investing in the future.

An enthusiastic and dynamic team that worked extremely well together, Peter and James brought with them a healthy blend of qualities. Working from the ground up and committed to best practice and continuous improvement,  they embedded teamwork into the culture of the business, laying the foundations that led to early ISO and Investors in People accreditation, as well as further certifications as the company grew over the first 10 years.

As the business grew, and through engineering with engineers, Peter and James founded new products and services in the quest to deliver best value for the customer, centred on technical know-how and training, good communication, commitment to quality, constant monitoring, effective working practices, and a focus on a top quality end product and service. In 2004 Peter became managing director and took full control of the business in 2008.

Peter developed the business on an excellence model from 2006, endorsed by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), leading growth across the highways, rail and energy markets through applying the JPCS Excellence model.

Today JPCS is a nationwide contractor, delivering safe and sustainable civil engineering and maintenance services to the public and private sectors, across the highways, rail and energy markets. Creating sustainable energy and infrastructure in the UK for almost 20 years, we maintain the country’s roads, pavements, and rail infrastructure, as well as providing innovative installation solutions for ground mounted solar panels and renewable energy.

Our beginnings

Peter was only 18 when he went out to work on pavement repairs with a gang, as part of an apprenticeship for James Clarke’s father. It was the insight from what he observed on the ground as a “mixer man that helped him recognise how the footpath and pavement repair process worked. They used a kind of footway slurry that would only set when the sun evaporated the water in it, so operations were limited by the weather. He got the end-user’s view of the product’s limitations and, just as importantly, got a perspective of the potential opportunities arising from these limitations. However, new cationic slurries became increasingly available and, recognising the opportunities of using these new products, Peter set up JPCS in 1993 at the age of 25.

Creating sustainable footway slurry seal

Cationic slurries are set by a chemical reaction and can be used in almost any weather. They seal, protect and water-proof pavements. We could see that this was an ideal product for repairing really damaged areas and started using it to rejuvenate pavements, while also carrying out value-adding enhancement work such as kerb repairs, weed-killing and lifting stop taps and BT covers, to tie into the thicker new slurry surface. This quality-focused process was effectively a miniature regeneration of a footpath – and it quickly set us apart from our competitors.

Moving into road and carriageway resurfacing through reputation on the pavements

We continued to build and develop the business throughout the nineties and had significant success when the cable TV companies and local authorities required pavements to be dug up and resurfaced. Again, we prospered by concentrating on quality – resurfacing the entire pavement, not just the trench area – and by doing a good job for local authorities we were then invited to work on the adjoining roads and carriageways.

Integrated highways maintenance

Through our experience of providing integrated services to repair and restore roads, pavements and footpaths, we then moved into other specialist highway engineering areas, including sign and street furniture installation, winter maintenance, traffic management and vehicle restraint systems.  We soon realised we were delivering integrated highways engineering services and developed integrated term maintenance services for local authorities.

Railway civil engineering services

Our success within highways construction led us into rail civil engineering and we became one of the first rail contractors with Link-up approved status. Through our experience of resurfacing roads and pavements, we developed a specialism for resurfacing station car parks, access roads, platforms and pedestrian areas, as well as the installation of off-track signage, handrails and equipment and the maintenance of depot facilities, such as station buildings and ticket sales and waiting rooms.

Ground mounted renewable energy

Following our move into railway civil engineering, we took our innovative services and products used on the highways into the renewable energy market, providing the UK’s most innovative installation method for photovoltaic solar arrays. Using the Groundscrew product – widely used on the highway to install road signs and street furniture and in the rail environment to install platform furniture and signage – we applied the engineering technology to provide innovative ground mounting systems for renewable energy, popular for commercial solar power. In 2011, we believe JPCS became the largest ground mounted installer of commercial solar photovoltaic (solar pv) in the UK.