RSK Group Ltd – the UK’s leading integrated environmental, engineering and technical services business – has announced the addition of a further impressive business to its ever-expanding portfolio. 

Yorkshire-based Centara Ltd provides surveying and engineering services to the UK rail, engineering, construction, utilities and electricity transmission and distribution sectors – and counts Balfour Beatty, Mace, National Grid and Network Rail among its key clients. The addition will advance RSK’s ‘Green Growth’ acquisitions plan, which intends to bring diversity to the group, add skills and customers, and extend the business’s geographic reach and sustainability credentials.

Centara, which currently comprises 60 employees, will join RSK’s Geosciences & Engineering Division, and will strengthen RSK’s offering in the provision of surveying and engineering design services across a wide range of sectors.

Strengthening RSK’s sector-leading offering

The company has an existing relationship with RSK business Consents Solutions, with whom it has worked on cable routes. Furthermore, Centara’s electrical engineering expertise will sit well alongside RSK businesses Pharos FES and Pharos Generator Services, for switchgear design, and Silcock Leedham for low- and high-voltage connections. 

Meanwhile, Centara’s geomatics and service mapping team will add to RSK’s current capacity for surveying, mapping and clearance of buried services in the RSK Orbital, RSK Geosciences and Central Alliance businesses.

 

“We are delighted to be joining the RSK group,” stated Ken Brown, MD at Centara. “This union will enable us to further develop our business as part of a larger organisation and will also benefit our clients through the extended service offering that we can put forward with the support of other RSK group businesses. 

“The RSK business model of enabling acquisitions to continue autonomously, but with the support of a wider group, was exactly what we were looking for,” he continued. “|We look forward to growing our business and to contributing to the expansion of the RSK group.”

RSK’s CEO, Alan Ryder, said the Group was “thrilled” to welcome Centara to the RSK family. “The acquisition will offer RSK the opportunity to grow and improve its existing service mapping and topographic surveying offering while also adding new services in high voltage electrical design and planning, and bureau services,” he noted. “Centara also complements RSK’s expanding sustainability-related services, as the business is well placed to support the UK’s investment in renewable energy through providing services for connecting renewable energy sources to the existing power grid and implementing the UK’s electric vehicle charging network.”

RSK Group’s flurry of recent acquisitions

• In the financial year 2016/2017, RSK acquired three businesses: ADAS, Dynamic Sampling, and JB Site Investigations.

• In FY 2017/2018, RSK acquired seven businesses: Acies, KMGP, Ian Farmer Associates, Cole Jarman, Up and Under Group, CJ Associates and RSKW.

• In FY 2018/2019, RSK completed 12 acquisitions: Central Alliance, Non Destructive Testing Services, Copeland Wedge Associates, Twig, CAN, PB Drilling, bts Group, the tbf Contracting businesses, Pellings, Dr Tillmann & Partner, Headland Archaeology, and Drilling Supplies & Hire Services.

• In FY 2019/2020, RSK acquired 11 businesses: Consents Solutions, Biocensus, Adverbo, RAW Technology, Geocore Site Investigations, Ecologia Environmental Solutions, ATP, Silcock Leedham Group, Salix, Morrison Falklands, and Nicholas O’Dwyer.

• In FY 2020/2021, RSK acquired: Ground Heat, PA Group, RoC Consulting, WRc, Cognica, Boden + Wasser, Amphos 21, Pharos Generator Services, Pharos Field Engineering Services, Binnies (including Black & Veatch Ltd, Black & Veatch Hong Kong Ltd and Black & Veatch (SEA) Pte Ltd in Singapore), CAS, EDP, CR Civil Engineering, and Enviresearch.

• In the current financial year, RSK has thus far acquired 20 businesses: The Scan Station, RSK Orbital, SkyVision International, Smith + Kennedy Architects, Stephenson Halliday, QSI, Waldrams, Althoff & Lang GbR, Minerex, TechnikGS, CS2, MWH Treatment, Electrokinetic, EiB, GeoExperts, Enviroflow, Streetwise, Carbon Zero Consulting, Envireau Water, and Centara.

Over three decades of organic growth

RSK is the UK’s leading integrated environmental, engineering and technical services provider. The business has grown organically and through strategic acquisition since it was established in 1989. 

Today, the RSK group is made up of more than 100 companies that are aligned to deliver end-to-end solutions to help organisations to achieve their goals in a sustainable manner. 

Headquartered in Helsby, Cheshire, in the UK, RSK employs over 7,000 specialists worldwide and is known for providing practical solutions to global challenges. 

RSK was ranked the second largest UK environmental consultancy by Environment Analyst in its 2020 Market Assessment Report and is placed in the 2020 Sunday Times PwC Top Track 250 – a ranking of Britain’s leading mid-market private companies.

RSK has a diverse client-base, although mainly services key accounts for clients in the energy, water, property, manufacturing, government and transport sectors.

The company is certified to the ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 international standards for quality, environmental management and health and safety management.