Profile: David Jackson

Yorkshireman David Jackson is what you might call a serial entrepreneur.

He has nurtured from inception five businesses in the construction sector, turning his hand from paving to employment to property. But his journey has not been without its challenges.

However, despite a battle with cancer, legal wrangling with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), and recessionary pressures, he has never given up on his entrepreneurial pursuits.

Mr Jackson tells me that running a business is “just a series of activities” and that its the inspiration behind the venture that is important – for him, it’s his family. The outcomes of his business career would not have been as great if his wife Lesley and her four children had not come into his life, he said.

“Undoubtedly, the single reason driving me was my second marriage and meeting the responsibility of suddenly having a family. I literally found the love of my life and she had four kids. And so the love of the four kids became an overriding factor as well.”

Mr Jackson, who left school at 17 to become a draughtsman in Leeds, is the managing director of Bridlington-based Hudson Contract.

In 2005, turnover of the business was £12.5m. Today, it is £415m, with 24 people employed.

“The premise of the business is to take responsibility for engaging self-employed tradespeople so that the construction business is completely free of that responsibility,” explained Mr Jackson.

Howard Waterson, managing director of Wright Civil Engineering in Hull, can be credited with sparking Mr Jackson’s idea for Hudson Contract.

Mr Jackson explained: “He held up a leaflet from the Inland Revenue [HMRC] which threatened construction businesses with heavy fines if they got the employment status of their operatives wrong. He said: ‘This is going to cause every construction business a big problem. Anyone who comes up with a solution would be worth a small fortune’.”

Mr Jackson recalled: “If there’s one defining moment in my entire business life when you react to one thing said to you that was it.”

Over a decade earlier, in 1984, at the age of 29, Mr Jackson had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. A job as a draughtsman in the engineering division at the Fisher Group in Cranswick had resulted in an appointment, several years later, as director of the division.

Mr Jackson, who kept working through the chemotherapy treatment, said: “I don’t think I realised quite how hard it was at the time. I was determined to maintain a positive attitude because I’m certain it helps with the treatment.”

After taking a short-term job as a sales office manager following a second re-diagnosis of cancer, Mr Jackson then found himself being re-diagnosed a third time. This time, the suggested treatment was radiotherapy, and Mr Jackson decided to take a new direction.

“I decided strangely that this was a good time to go into business myself,” he explained.

Mr Jackson and a bricklayer, Dick Atkinson, bought two pick-up trucks and started a paving and groundworks business. They grew The Paving Company to a business employing 16 people, but when the construction industry went into recession it was scaled back, and eventually it closed in 1995.

Meanwhile, in 1989 Mr Jackson had started a second business, an employment agency in Hull for construction workers, which ended several years later due to the downturn. In 1991, Mr Jackson launched a third, a housebuilding company. “We ended up building bespoke houses for people in different parts of Yorkshire. We built one in Wakefield for cricketer Darren Gough,” he said.

Mr Jackson met his second wife Lesley in 1986 and they were married four years later. “Inheriting a family as I did coincided with my recovery from cancer treatment. It was the most inspirational of circumstances,” said Mr Jackson.

Hudson Contract was established in 1996, and 18 months later after its inception it faced a challenge by HMRC, which ruled the business was acting incorrectly.

Mr Jackson explained: “At this point we were engaging 272 operatives. And as a result of the ruling we lost 80 per cent of our business.” Mr Jackson believed HMRC had ruled incorrectly, and vowed to fight its decision.

He said: “They said that we didn’t have the right or the jurisdiction to engage people on a self-employed basis. They deemed them to be our employees.”

Going through the appeal process was arduous, said Mr Jackson, but four years after the initial ruling, with the help of representation, it was overturned.

Later, Mr Jackson became embroiled in a subsequent argument with the HMRC over recompense, and a fresh battle ensued in 2005, but was resolved with a High Court ruling that was agreed by both parties.

Mr Jackson’s fifth business, Quantiguide, founded in late 1999, resulted in a piece of software which communicated and specified the costs of building a bespoke, individual house, and was eventually sold.

In recent years, his focus has been on growing Hudson Contract.

“We literally started a direct marketing campaign. My wife and kids stuffed leaflets into envelopes and posted them out. It was sufficient to attract interest,” he recalled.

Attending a business owner manager’s programme at Cranfield University turned the amateur marketing campaign into a professional one.

“It was investing in the programme that allowed the business to maintain its level throughout the recessionary pressures of 2008/09, before returning to growth in the last two years,” said Mr Jackson.

“So when all around us were sinking, stalling, failing, we managed to simply level off before our growth plan overcame the effects of the recession.”

And the growth of Hudson Contract is set to continue throughout this year, he added.

“I’d be surprised if the construction industry grows in 2012, although I think it’s inevitable growth will come perhaps in 2013. With the Government having to steer a course of spending less, the construction sector that services the building of infrastructure is only just seeing the effects of reduced capital investment.”

However, Mr Jackson said: “We still have a huge potential client base, and our marketing campaign continues to attract potential clients.

“We only have 3 or 4 per cent of the marketplace, and some of the marketplace is not open to us, but nonetheless there’s still huge potential.

“The one thing common to my fives businesses has been that I’ve looked for a method of operation with repetitive characteristics.

“For me, if you refine the business method it’s easier to realise the profit. I’m a method person. I’m methodical.”

David Jackson factfile

Title: Managing director of Hudson Contract

Date of birth: 05/01/55

Education: Headlands in Bridlington; Kitson College in Leeds

First job: Apprentice draughtsman in Leeds

Favourite song: That’s Life by Frank Sinatra

Car driven: DB9 Aston Martin

Favourite film: Collateral

Favourite holiday destination: Lake Garda in Italy

Last book read: The Affair by Lee Childs

What I’m most proud of: My wife and children.