Alistair Houghton meets ALAN BROWNE, chief executive of survey and GPS equipment supplier Korec

WITH his GPS and surveying equipment finding its way from the back of cows to Olympic venues and TV’s Time Team, there’s never a dull day for Alan Browne.

Browne leads Crosby-based Korec, which he says has clients stretching from “archaeology to zoology” and which sells high-tech equipment across the UK and Ireland.

The fast-talking Dubliner set up his own business in 1995 in Ireland, and in 2005 bought 38-year-old Crosby company Survey Supplies to form Korec.

As a company with many clients in the construction sector, Korec is taking a bruising in the current downturn and has had to restructure to cope with the slump.

The climate may be tough, but Browne says there are still growth opportunities in the construction sector, which he says is a “technological laggard” that is still investing in new ways to improve productivity.

Korec’s mapping technology is also attracting a lot of interest, he says, and its sales teams are now striving to convert those leads into sales.

“The pipeline we have is probably three times what it was a year ago,” he said. “That’s a pipeline, not sales. But the interest levels are high.

“In the medium to long-term I’m optimistic about the company. I’m optimistic about the UK, a little less so about Ireland because there are still problems.

“But the world doesn’t come to a stop. People still need to get up and build things and eat things.”

Browne knows all about thriving in hard times as he started his career in a recession immediately after completing his engineering degree in 1990.

“I moved to the UK just in time for the construction industry to collapse,” he smiled wryly. “I was made redundant within five months.”

He returned to an Ireland where unemployment stood at almost 20% and started hunting for a new job. Eventually, he became a salesman at a family company selling GPS and surveying equipment but soon realised he wanted to run his own business.

After trying to buy the company he worked for, he struck out on his own and founded Precision Construction Instruments in 1995. After a slow start, he saw it become a key player in both Ireland and the UK. In 2002, it expanded into the UK and in 2005 it bought Survey Supplies.

Korec has consolidated its operations into two UK sites: its head office in Crosby and warehouse in Cambridgeshire, and a base in Dublin.

Browne, who describes himself as a “natural entrepreneur” who loves to be constantly challenged, lives in Dublin with his wife and four daughters, but spends three days a week in Merseyside.

When not at work he enjoys running, and last year ran the Dublin Marathon as part of Korec’s efforts to raise money for UNICEF.

Korec’s work divides into three main sectors; surveying, construction and mapping. In those sectors Korec is the UK and Ireland distributor for Trimble, a NASDAQ-listed company turning over $1.2bn annually, and is continually expanding its range of Trimble products so it can expand into new markets.

Its surveying equipment is used by everyone from engineers to architects and utility companies to Network Rail. Korec also supplied a laser scanner for the survey of the London 2012 Olympic sailing venue in Weymouth.

Surveying equipment is now increasingly being used to survey accident scenes, and the firm has, in the last 18 months, provided £1.8m of equipment to the Highways Agency.

Browne said: “The problem when the police survey a scene is that the road has to be closed. The Highways Agency is saying to them ‘what do you need to be able to get this road open faster?’

“You had policemen measuring skid marks with measuring tape but now they’re using GPS. It’s getting the same information much more quickly and much more accurately.”

In construction, Browne says Korec is selling new technology to improve accuracy on building projects. That includes supplying robotic equipment that can control earth movers using GPS technology.

He said: “You might have a bulldozer with a computer and GPS receiver in the cab and it can work to an accuracy of 20mm. The driver moves the machine forward and the computer moves the blades.”

Users of Korec’s mapping equipment include utility companies and local authorities. Sefton Council used Korec GPS equipment to plot the position of all its street lights so engineers could keep an accurate record of the state they were in, while other customers include National Grid.

Mapping technology, says Browne, has helped some customers solve unusual problems.

“In mapping, we say we do everything from archaeology to zoology,” smiled Browne.

“We’ve had GPS machines strapped to the back of cows to measure where they’re moving.

“We had an interesting challenge in Ireland with telecommunications company UPC, who were putting GPS tracking in all their technicians’ vehicles.

“In Ireland, we don’t have postcodes. UPC had 30,000 customers where they didn’t know exactly where their property was.

“What these UPC guys had in their vans was a little button they could press when they visited a site to measure its GPS location, so, in future, whenever there’s a problem with Mrs Brown, they know exactly where she is.”

The downturn has hit Korec across all sectors in both the UK and Ireland.

Browne said he was, for example, expecting UK sales this year to be down from £15m to £10m. The overall economic situation is, he says, even worse in Ireland.

“ There is still a shortage of housing in the UK,” he said. “Houses will have to be built, though they might not this year.

“But in Ireland there’s a huge oversupply of houses and that will take a period of time to work out.

“I think the UK will take 18 months to get back. But I believe Ireland could take three or four years.

“We have tough times ahead and at times like this you have to be ready to take tough decisions.

“We have unfortunately lost some very good people. That’s a very tough thing to do.”

Browne has served his time as an entrepreneur and a salesman, and says he is now working to hone his management skills.

He said: “I’m a natural entrepreneur and managing is something I’m learning, but I’m always looking for opportunities.

“I can’t imagine really that I’d ever work for anybody else now. But you never know.

“My vision is to be happy, profitable and respected.”

alistairhoughton