DIVORCE PROCEEDINGS
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Although it still lives under the same roof as Alder Valley South, AV Engineering is pursuing its own business. Tim Blackmore reports on its preparations for privatisation
THERE is no longer any such thing as a typical National Bus Company subsidiary engineering organisation. The 1985 Transport Act quickly saw to that — it has prepared the ground for Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley's dream of the stateowned bus company being sold to the private sector becoming a reality. In doing so it has given nightmares to many NBC staff.
It is not the principle of privatisation which is disturbing their sleep, but the degree of fragmentation which is preceding it. Ridley wants NBC to be broken up into 71 separate lots before the auction takes place. In response to this demand many subsidiaries already have been split into separate operating and engineering companies.
A cynical observer might see that as nothing more than a devious, relatively easy means of cutting engineering staff levels to make the individual companies more attractive to prospective buyers, and he would have no difficulty in finding evidence to support that view. The list of NBC engineering companies which have been, or are about to be, wound up would serve well. It includes APT (Amalgamated Passenger Transport), Kent Engineering, Hants and Dorset Engineering, and I lerald Engineering.
Each of these has gone under remarkably quietly. Had NBC directly created so many redundancies it would have attracted a lot more attention and met stiffer resistance.
Derek Allison is no cynic. But as the head of AV Engineering, one of the smallest of the recently-established NBC engineering companies, can he be at all optimistic about its future?
"I wouldn't describe myself as an
optimist, but I am a realist", he says. "People ask me about my contingency plans for AV Engineering. There is none. We either succeed or we fail. W( burnt our boats in January 1985."
That was when AV Engineering of Aldershot was set up as a division of tl NBC subsidiary which had been Alder Valley. At the end of last year Alder Valley was sub divided into Alder Valley South and Alder Valley North.
Now AV Engineering is a tenant of Alder Valley South, paying rent to it fi the 1,300mit occupies of the bus company's 1.8 hectare (4.5 acre) site in Halimote Road, not far from the centrt of Aldershot.
Later this year AV Engineering is expected to take a lease on its share of the site, thereby making it more independent.
I, HE P1 IYS1CALLY close links between what are now two autonomous NBC subsidiaries, immediately obvious to any visitor Halimote Road, even though their tivities are quite different. One Crates buses; the other, AV
igineering, in Derek Allison's words, tries out "the servicing and repair of hides — all kinds."
Plainly, these links cannot be severed sily.
ln a corner of AV South's gearbox d engine repair workshop is AV igineering's light vehicles (cars and ;ht vans) service and repair bay. ,mplete with four-post lift. Next door, the sunken workshop area, are three ts which belong to Derek Allison's icration and three which are the sponsibility of the AV South fleet igincer, John Bryant.
In the bodyshop, paint shop and trim Op there are similar invisible divisions. V Engineering operates four of eight xly repair bays, for example. An nsider could be forgiven for thinking _at everyone there was working for the me company.
Allison emphasises that the significant fference between his company and AV Aids — or indeed any separate igineering company and a bus fleet perator — is not where the staff work, at their commercial approach to the ,ork.
"We have only 23 employees, and for ich one we need an annual revenue of 20,000 to i25,000," he says. AV ngineering currently is on target with sat figure, its total annual revenue cing 5.300,000. As Allison says, that sakes it "a little fish in the NBC engineering pond", but in this particular pond it is dear that success and life expectancy are not related to size. Much more important are expertise, reputation and enthusiasm, and in these areas AV Engineering appears strong.
GEOGRAPHICAL location also gives it an advantage. Signs around Aldershot describe the town as "the home of the British Army," an army which, because of a decree by former Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine is increasingly engaging outside firms to service and repair its vehicles.
AV Engineering, having satisfied the army with the standard of an initial major Foden crash repair it undertook last year, now receives much of the army's work.
Another major contract was won recently from Gatwick Handling for the refurbishment of its Leyland Nationals. And, not surprisingly, a steady stream of work comes from various NBC subsidiaries.
The bodyshop is currently busy converting seven Leyland Nationals for AV North to be used on its new Careline service from next month. This will provide a low-cost transport alternative to taxis for physically handicapped people travelling between London's railway stations and airports.
'I he clever part of the National Careline conversion, which was developed jointly by Allison and his team and Ratcliff, the tail lift manufacturer, is that it has a wheelchair lift mounted in the bus's front entrance, rather than in a special central entrance. This means that the bus can be adapted for normal stage carriage work. Its special wheelchair mounts can he replaced by conventional seats in only a matter of hours. As competition between bus operators intensifies, flexibility of that kind will become increasingly important.
Allison's career in bus engineering stretches back 32 years and includes a four-year spell as Alder Valley's chief engineer from 1980. He readily admits that after a career that he cannot instantly distance himself from buses, privatisation or no. But he is actively seeking and, with the help of a sales engineer, finding a much wider range of work for his new company.
The front cover of AV Engineering's comprehensive information pack amply illustrates just how wide that range can be. It shows a sports car and a saloon car, a minibus and a 16-ton truck.
AV Engineering is an agent for Autosteer pneumatic power-assisted steering conversion kits; Kysor Industrial engine teniperature control devices; and Calor Autogas liquefied petroleum gas. It also supplies and fits Autogas LPG car and van conversions.
If you ask any NBC employee nowadays exactly what he or she thinks the future holds you are unlikely to get a positive response. But one thing is certain — that all NBC subsidiaries, including the surviving engineering companies, arc to be sold off within three years.
Will AV Engineering be the subject of a management buy-out? Allison is more circumspect than usual in replying to that question: "The one thing I know is that what the future holds for us is bloody hard work," he says.