To celebrate women in engineering day 2023, Sheri Irons, owner of Independent Substation Services (INDSS), explores her career in the engineering industry
Aylesbury-based Independent Substation Services (INDSS) specialises in high-voltage electrical engineering and substation services.
Run by owner Sheri Irons, the company has won contracts on a raft of high-profile projects, including Crossrail, Tideway, London Power Tunnels 2 and most recently, HS2.
It is supplying and maintaining the equipment providing the temporary power for all of the south portal HS2 site buildings and the two tunnel boring machines (TBMs).
To celebrate women in engineering day, Sheri discusses her experience and growth in the sector.
Last financial year, the firm achieved a record £2.5m turnover
INDSS is a family business, and I’m very proud of that. My husband, Mark, is operations director, and we established the company in 2011 with no financial backing. Mark is highly experienced in high-voltage electrical engineering, having started his trade building transformers at Winders Electrical back in the 1980s.
His expertise, combined with my background in health and safety, HR and project management, gave us the confidence we could establish a successful company.
Today the business has 13 full-time employees, including an 8-strong field team of engineers. My son, Josh (32) and his wife, Gemma (29), have both assumed full time roles in the business and are very much part of the future plan.
INDSS joined TAB in early 2022
INDSS’ most recent achievements are undoubtedly due to a decision I made in early 2022 to open the business up to external scrutiny.
“Perhaps as a female business leader, it was an easy decision to make as by nature, I think women do share more than men. I was confident I was running a solid business but there were growth ambitions I wanted to fulfil, and I was unsure which direction to go in.”
I joined TAB (The Alternative Board) North Chilterns and Oxford having received a phone call from its local owner James. TAB offered me something I didn’t have – a sounding board for ideas and strategic thinking out loud.
I immediately recognised the benefits it could bring to INDSS. James offered me the chance to sit on a board every month and discuss INDSS with a group of other local business owners. Each would bring their own business challenge and as a group we would discuss how to problem solve it. Alongside that, James offered me 1:1 coaching to help me work through my ambitions for the business.
When attending the TAB board meetings, it’s hard to explain how a business printing t-shirts have similar issues to me, a team of engineers working with 33,000 volts of electricity!
But there’s an energy and enthusiasm that runs through TAB meetings that is incredibly powerful. Every member of my peer board works in a different sector, but we share so many of the same challenges – retaining staff, when to recruit, how to switch off, are we ready to expand?
‘The power of collaboration cannot be underestimated’
Once a month, we meet in person to discuss our businesses and set individual targets for which we are held accountable at the next meeting. It’s a simple concept but one which is incredibly successful. 80 per cent of TAB members report their turnover increasing since joining.
The power of collaboration cannot be underestimated, and it’s not just small firms that benefit. TAB is working with business leaders inside large corporations too. Its boards offer space away from corporate scrutiny for members to talk in confidence, take advice from industry outsiders and make more considered decisions.
Working in a small engineering firm can be quite insular and blinker focussed, so spending time each month with other local business owners has also been invaluable to me. It is almost impossible to step back from your own business and identify where change needs to happen so that external input has been transformational. Running an SME is not easy, but the level of support I have gained through TAB has given me renewed ambition to take INDSS to new heights.
I have made some critical business decisions since joining TAB last year: investing in (Customer Relationship Management) CRM software, employing a CRM manager and setting up quarterly strategic meetings with my family on a formal level.
TAB has also helped me establish systems and structures that were needed to support the growth of the business. We have been able to use our cashflow to purchase brand new essential test equipment.
Offering her staff new test equipment gives Sheri the ‘leading edge’ in the engineering field
Offering our staff new test equipment is exciting and gives us the leading edge in our engineering field, offering our clients the best innovative test equipment on their plant. Our engineers are excited to use the new test equipment and show it off wherever they can!
I have always been a forward-thinking business owner and one element TAB has really enabled me to focus on is my business growth. My son, Josh and his wife, Gemma, both work in INDSS full time but, as I’m sure as many business owners can relate to, it can be hard to let go of responsibilities and trust others to do as good a job as you have been doing for years.
James has helped me to create a clear plan for how we envisage the company in 5,10 and even 20 years’ time. I now have tools in place to steadily elevate Josh and Gemma within the business while reducing my day-to-day presence, giving me more time to focus on the strategy. It’s given clarity to the whole team and a strategy that will ensure INDSS continues to grow successfully over the coming years.
The results over the past year have been incredible not just for me, but for our entire team. TAB has given us the confidence to pursue and win big contracts like HS2. Now we relish the big opportunities and chance to showcase the passion and entrepreneurial spirit behind our SME. And it’s great to know that every success we have is equally celebrated by my local peers. A win for us is a win for the entire TAB community and that feeling really is electric.
