Tilbury Douglas is a British construction business with its head office in London.
The company was originally founded in 1884 as the London and Tilbury Lighterage Company Limited, and retained the Tilbury name until 2001. From 1991 it was known as Tilbury Douglas following a merger with RM Douglas, but in 2001 rebranded as Interserve plc. The name change partly reflected a shift in focus during the 1990s towards maintenance and facilities management services sectors, and this continued in the 2000s, buoyed by further acquisitions.
However, financial issues led to Interserve going into administration in March 2019. In a pre-pack deal, the main operating businesses were immediately sold to a newly incorporated company owned by lenders, Interserve Group Ltd, and a break-up of the company followed. Interserve's facilities management business was sold to Mitie in December 2020, and RMD Kwikform was sold in October 2021 to France's Altrad.
In March 2021, Interserve resurrected the Tilbury Douglas brand for its construction and engineering services businesses, and in June 2022, Tilbury Douglas fully separated from Interserve Group and became a standalone construction contracting company.
History
Early history – 1884 to 1930s
Origins In 1884, the London and Tilbury Lighterage Company Limited was formed to transfer goods by sailing barge to and from ships on the River Thames, London, England. A lighterage is the fee paid for the use of a lighter,Dictionary.com Definition of Lighterage a large, open, flat bottomed barge, that could transport goods a short distance in shallow waters.Dictionary.com Definition of Lighter At the time London was the busiest port in the world. Lightering provided a service much in demand in the overcrowded river because of the need to transship goods from ships berthed there and to convey them to the riverside wharves, where the larger open water cargo ships were unable to dock due to their size and draft or, to more efficiently and effectively deal with the number of ships congregating in the river.London Lighterage Tugs London Lighterage Tugs website Retrieved 13 March 2013 By 1887 the company is recorded as occupying premises of a former Lloyd's Register Proving House and Chain-Testing Shed and subsequent Police Station at Preston Road, West India Docks.
In 1888 the company expanded into dredging, where mechanisation led to greatly improved productivity, and secured a contract with the Port of London (PLA) to remove dredged ballast. This new venture was complementary to the existing business, utilising the barges already owned by the company, together with their knowledge of the river and its tides. There was a further synergy between lightering and dredging; lightering was necessary where ports were shallow and the draft of a vessel needed to be reduced to facilitate their entry into port, whereas dredging increased the depth of river channels to enable vessels with a larger draft to berth into port. The company's move into dredging therefore protected its commercial interest against the perceived threat to lightering. This can be seen vindicated by the decline in lighterage for dry bulk cargo after the middle of the 20th century, although the eventual decline in lighterage was caused by the adoption of road haulage as the main distribution method when London's docks moved downstream (away from what is now known as Docklands) and shipping adopted containerisation methods.UK Parliamentary Debate 18 December 1967 Hansard 18 December 1967 Retrieved 18 March 2013 However, for the time being lightering still thrived and the New Zealand-based Ashburton Guardian reported in 1890 that the company was an early pioneer in the transshipment of frozen meat. The newspaper noted that their capabilities for handling this cargo had been highlighted during a trip, organized for delegates at the International Congress on Inland Navigation, to inspect the company's custom built vessels complete with cold chambers that enabled the meat to arrive at Smithfield Market frozen.
Name changes and international presence The company changed its name several times over the next few years; in 1896 to The London and Tilbury Lighterage Contracting and Dredging Company Limited, in 1904 to the Tilbury Contracting and Dredging Company Limited, then in 1906 to Tilbury Contracting and Dredging Company (1906) Limited, before In 1908 reverting to Tilbury Contracting and Dredging Company Limited (TCDC), a name it settled on for the following 56 years. These were not the only changes experienced by the business, for the advance of technology meant that the firm's sailing barges were becoming obsolete by the advent of steam tugs, and the Company commissioned the new tugs to be built. As the company grew, so did its profile and it came to be frequently featured in the pages of The Engineer. Mention is made in 1907 of the role played by its dredging craft in widening and deepening the navigation channel of the River Clyde to assist the maiden voyage of RMS Lusitania, then the world's biggest ship. A further example was reported on 9 June 1911 which in an article about major dredging works to the River Loire around the port of Nantes, France, noted that the company "had a special dredger constructed for the purpose". This contract is noteworthy as it comprised, at commencement, a three-year undertaking to form a new river bed to divert the course of the river, as well as removing islands and sand banks. A total of 10 million cubic metres of material was to be dredged as part of these £1 million works. On 9 December 1911 Singaporean newspaper The Weekly Sun reported that TCDC "the well-known dredging contractors of London, have entered into a contract…for the formation of a port known as Port Argentine" involving the dredging of 16 million cubic metres to form an approach channel some 9.5 miles long in the Buenos Aires province. During this period, the company also carried out dredging projects in Canada, Egypt and Denmark.
World War I service A number of the company's vessels were requisitioned for war duties during World War I where they took part in various military campaigns including in the Dardanelles, Archangel and the Persian Gulf. Company tug 'Danube' was transferred to Admiralty control and assisted a monitor through the Mediterranean en route to the Rufiji River delta, in present-day Tanzania, in order to destroy the German raider Konigsberg.
Exit from lighterage Lightering gradually declined due to the increase of road traffic, and dredging became the mainstay of the company. In addition to its dredging contract with the PLA, TCDC secured many other contracts including, between 1923 and 1927, the deepening and on going maintenance of the depth of the navigation channel and tidal harbour at the Port of Aberdeen 1932 saw the firm begin work on a new harbour at Haifa in British Mandate Territory of Palestine that was completed in 1934.Obituary - Major Derek Cooper, MC, OBE, World War II hero who espoused the Palestinian cause The Independent 31 May 2007 Retrieved from Charles Glass website 28 March 2013 In 1938 the company's lighterage fleet was amalgamated with vessels owned by W H J Alexander Limited and Tate and Lyle Limited to form Silvertown Services Limited and TCDC severed its links with its original business activity.
World War II service – 1940 to 1945 As in World War I, many of the company's fleet of tugs were requisitioned for active service during World War II. These initially came under the control of the Royal Navy examination service, where they were used to patrol harbour and river entrances. The role of the examination service crews was to board all merchant ships and trawlers entering ports or rivers, scrutinise their papers and if need be to search these craft for evidence of intent to help the enemy.
Operation Dynamo Although the company had disposed of its lighterage fleet, it retained craft for its dredging activities. It was these vessels, its tugs and barges, that were represented within the merchant marine fleet that took part in Operation Dynamo, commonly known as the Dunkirk evacuation during World War II, when in late May and early June 1940 a flotilla of 700 ships and boats assisted in the rescue and repatriation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and French troops. Amongst this fleet of ships and boats was the company's dredger Gallions Reach, originally built in 1936 as a steam hopper, but converted at the outbreak of war to a salvage vessel, this vessel rescued 123 men from the beaches and returned them to England.
Operation Neptune On 6 June 1944 company tug Danube VI, under COTUG (Control Tug Operation), participated in Operation Neptune, the D-Day invasion of Normandy, known as the Normandy landings by towing the 'Phoenix' (mulberry harbour breakwater units) and 'Whale' (floating roadway units that connected the mulberry harbour pier heads to the landing beaches), as well as ammunition barges from Littlehampton across the English Channel to the Normandy beachhead.
Operation Pluto Company tug Danube V took part in pipelaying activities during July 1944, as part of Operation Pluto, which brought together British scientists, oil companies and the armed forces in the construction of undersea oil pipelines under the English Channel between England and France to transport fuel supplies to Allied forces on the European continent.
Post war to stock market listing – 1946 to 1960s As the UK sought to rebuild infrastructure after the Second World War, the company established a civil engineering capability in the 1940s to participate in this activity; together with building these had become the company's focus by the 1960s. In 1964 the Port of London Authority dredging contract ended, 76 years after it was first awarded, and the company ceased to operate as a dredging contractor in the UK. In 1965 the remaining fleet of dredging vessels was sold to Westminster Dredging Company Limited. The company, by then named Tilbury Contracting Group Limited, applied for admission of its shares onto the London Stock Exchange and trading commenced on 12 October 1966.
Acquisition of R M Douglas Holdings and expansion into the Middle East – 1990s In 1991 Tilbury acquired RM Douglas, another construction and civil engineering business, the combined business becoming known as Tilbury Douglas. Although both groups had a UK-wide presence, the rationale of the acquisition was that the two companies complemented each other. Tilbury Group was headquartered in Reading and predominantly involved in building work in the South of England and in Scotland, while R M Douglas was headquartered in Birmingham and its strongest regional presence was in the Midlands and the North of England with a strong bias towards civil engineering projects.
In common with many major national and regional contractors in the postwar period, R M Douglas successfully bid for work in the construction of airfields and motorways where it completed various UK motorway building projects in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
The acquisition of Douglas also brought with it the construction equipment company Rapid Metal Developments (RMD) a formwork and falsework manufacturer incorporated in 1948, together with joint ventures in Oman (Douglas OHI)Douglas OHI > Home and United Arab Emirates (Khansaheb), both of which were initially established by Douglas in 1981. This expanded the geographical coverage of the company to the Middle East and this presence was further strengthened by the establishment of a joint venture in Qatar (Gulf Contracting Company).
Diversification and name change – late 1990s and early 2000s