The Window Company (Contracts), the award-winning commercial installer, has warned against taking on too much work as the industry continues to battle with a shortage of skilled fitters.

Chair David Thornton explained: “For the first time ever, we have turned down some the opportunity to tender for some of the CIF funded work available in schools over the summer because we don’t believe it will benefit our business in the short to medium term.

“We pride ourselves on being a good company to work for and our rates of pay and benefits package are amongst the best in the industry, but we would still find it challenging to find enough resource to cope with significant extra volumes at this point.

“All our existing teams are fully occupied with ongoing contracts and pre-planned schools work, and we won’t jeopardise existing work just for the sake of additional volume.

“It’s the old adage ‘turnover is vanity, profit is sanity’ and while it goes against every entrepreneurial instinct to turn down work, we think it’s the right decision for our business. Time and again we see good companies fail simply because they overstretch themselves and while there is insufficient skilled labour in the market, that could become a very real danger for some.

“We are arguably at just about the optimal size for an installation business at the moment, with a tightly knit senior team that can still oversee every project individually. We still have capacity for growth, primarily because we have invested in tech solutions which make us operationally efficient, but we are realistic about current state of the labour market, and we are becoming increasingly selective about the additional work we take on.”

Based in Chelmsford, The Window Company (Contracts) specialises in social housing and new build work across London and the South East. Independent and still family owned, the company has a strong network of fabricators across the UK supplying windows and doors in aluminium, PVC-U and timber.