Business View Caribbean | December 2020

23 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN DECEMBER 2020 SERVUS LTD air conditioning, janitorial, landscaping, and pest control, Servus customizes their offering to suit the requirements of each individual customer. Large clients in the Servus roster include Shell Trinidad & Tobago, Guardian Life of the Caribbean, RBC Royal Bank, Scotiabank, but they count a number of smaller clients among their valuable working relationships, as well. Servus has also diversified into residential management, condominiums, large developments and many of the company’s existing customers live in those buildings. In a recent conversation with Business View Caribbean, Servus CEO, Edward Kacal, shared his insights into the company’s evolution, the recent impact of COVID-19, and strategic plans for future growth. BVC: How did Servus evolve from when it was founded? Kacal: “The company was started in 2002, as a partnership between a large insurance company here, who had seen the benefits of outsourcing facilities management, and a construction company out of Britain called Carillion that was doing a lot of work here at the time. They developed a small clientele of energy companies, insurance companies, and one property developer, then in 2012, Carillion pulled out of Trinidad and the company went up for sale. The real estate developer who was a major client at the time purchased the company and in 2013 I came in. “At the time, we looked at how we could expand the company from having solely oil and gas and the financial sector clients. We started to self-perform a lot of the functions we used to contract out, and we started to build our own teams. One of the first areas we focused on was janitorial services and then we started to self- perform air-conditioning services because we had a cadre of technicians and qualified team members with these competencies. Then we started to do electrical testing, and pest control, and we brought on hygiene products, and we continued to bring more of our subcontracted