BES, the multidisciplinary design, engineering, and construction specialist serving the pharmaceutical, healthcare, biotechnology, and life sciences sectors, is to appoint Zeb Ahmed to the new role of CEO, ‘as part of a suite of leadership changes’.
Marking the company’s 20th year in business, the changes are designed to support continued profitable growth as BES takes on increasingly complex and fast-track process engineering-led projects.
A former deputy MD of Bouygues Energies & Services Contracting UK, Zeb Ahmed has already joined BES as managing director designate, and will become CEO on 1 July this year. A Chartered European Process Engineer and Oxford University Alumnus with triple fellowship of the Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Energy Institute, and the Institute of Directors, he previously worked with several of BES’s existing leadership team in the 1990s. The company says his process engineering background ‘complements the turnkey service offering’ of the BES business, adding that ‘the existing relationship between BES’s current board members and the new CEO will enable a smooth transition’.
Founding director and incumbent MD, Steve Marsh, will become chairman from 1 July, retaining strategic and financial oversight for steering the business through its next development phase. Engineering director and founding board member, Paul Marsh, will become COO when the new leadership structure takes effect.
Based in Rochdale and Milton Keynes, BES ‘works collaboratively’ with innovative start-ups, SMEs, and blue chip clients, and in partnership with main contractors. It offers turnkey consultancy, engineering, design, and construction, ‘for technically complex, controlled environments’ – including cleanrooms, laboratories, and manufacturing / processing facilities. Founded in 2002, it has grown to a £100 million turnover business with a staff of 180 and in 2017 acquired specialist partitioning system company, Norwood.
Steve Marsh (pictured left with, centre, Zeb Ahmed, and right, Paul Marsh) said: “After 20 years of success, the company is well-positioned to achieve our vision of becoming the leading and largest multidisciplinary specialist in the cGMP facility consultancy, design, and delivery sector. The changes to our board, and the addition of Zeb to our leadership team, will enable us to do that.”
BES claims to be one of only a few specialist companies of its type operating exclusively in the pharma, healthcare, ‘bio’, and life sciences, sectors.