The performance of major firms in the heating and ventilating industry

Because of the fragmentation of the construction industry into separate specialisms, each sub-industry involved in the construction process requires separate analysis to understand differences (and similarities) between them. As a start in this process of analysis the heating and ventilation industry is discussed in terms of the turnover, fixed assets, plant hire and labour, profits, and shareholder funds of the largest firms, which were members of the Major Contractors' Group of the Heating and Ventilating Contractors Association. This provides the context and basis for a discussion concerning the conduct and performance of the dominant firms in the heating and ventilating industry in the latter half of the twentieth century. Taking this group of specialist firms as a whole the paper provides evidence of the extreme volatility of branches of the construction sector and firms' responses. Furthermore this analysis makes use of long run data from all the firms in the Major Contractors' Group. The study also reveals that few mergers took place between firms in the sector but all the firms in the Major Contractors Group had been taken over by firms outside the heating and ventilation sector. None had displayed any significant diversification out of the sector. Most firms then became loss leaders for their parent companies. The discussion of the accounting variables concludes that although the population of firms in the study is small, it would be possible in principle to model the variables and use the model for comparison with other sub-industries in construction.