Shepherd Building Group

Shepherd Building Group

Type	Private
Industry	Construction
Predecessor	F. Shepherd & Son
Founded	1890 (1890)
Founder	Frederick Shepherd
Headquarters	York, England
Area served	United Kingdom
Owner	Shepherd Family
Number of employees	c. 2,000
Divisions	Construction and engineering, manufacturing, property
Website	www.shepherd-group.com/index.html

The Shepherd Building Group Ltd. (trading name Shepherd Group) was one of the largest privately owned construction groups in the UK, but restructured in 2015 to focus on its Portakabin portable buildings businesses. It has a group annual turnover of around £600 million (following a change of financial year-end, the Group reported a turnover of £879.5m during the 18 months up to 31 December 2015).

The Shepherd Group's history can be traced to 1890 when Frederick Shepherd set up a successful building business in York. Growth, through innovation by several generations of the Shepherd family, by acquisition and through geographical expansion, led to the formation of Shepherd Building Group in 1962.

In 1890, at the age of 35, Frederick Shepherd who was a joiner, set up his own business, which rapidly achieved success in speculative house building in York. He was later joined by two sons, William who was the elder, and Frederick Welton, who had trained as a bricklayer. Around 1900, work was being undertaken outside York and a recession in the market for new houses led to a diversification into general contracting jobs.

When William Shepherd emigrated to America in 1910 the business became known as F. Shepherd and Son, and it was incorporated as a private company in 1924.

The founding Frederick Shepherd died in 1930. His son, Frederick Welton, was a driving force in the company and had been instrumental in developing the firm's main premises, at Blue Bridge Lane, beside the River Ouse, which remained the Shepherd head office premises until 1995. By the late 1930s the company with a workforce of around 700, had established a major presence throughout Yorkshire and North East England. When World War II ended, the firm took advantage of opportunities to expand its contracting operations, both by opening new offices and by acquiring existing local companies in new areas. The strategy was successful and the Shepherd company continued to expand under the direction of four of Frederick Welton's sons, Peter (later Sir Peter), Donald, Michael and Colin. Other substantial operations such as Shepherd Building Service, Shepherd Homes, Shepherd Engineering Services, Shepherd Development Co. and Mechplant became major divisions of the company.

In 1962 the structure of the business was reorganised when the new holding company, Shepherd Group Ltd, was formed. Then, in the late 1970s, the Shepherd Group became one of the 500 largest companies in the UK. This was achieved without raising public capital and the Group remain an unquoted company. It became one of the largest wholly family-owned private companies in the UK.