Jeff Done spent the first 22 years of his career as an employee of the same organisation he joined as a graduate in 1981. GEC not only supplied an excellent engineering grounding by throwing its young recruits in at the deep end all over the World, but instilled in its ambitious managers a strong, commercial business sense that stayed with you for the rest of your life.
GEC became GEC Alsthom and then ALSTOM in a period of rapid and exciting expansion simultaneously attempting to integrate a "Gallic" style and vision of market share with an "Anglo" obsession with profitability. Jeff became a specialist in turnkey projects which needed the integration of funding, design, build, operation and maintenance skills, usually in joint venture with civils and banking partners. The business model was a good one, delivering opportunities for ALSTOM Transport products/services on projects it would not otherwise have access to and with higher overall margins.
In the Transport Sector the simultaneous cultural and business challenges were being met successfully but in 2002 ALSTOM fell on hard times as its power business spent all the Group's available cash buying ABB Power just before it became clear that the turbine technology was not all it was supposed to be and it had simply acquired huge liabilities. The group's investment resources that the Transport "Concessions team" relied apon disappeared and, as its leader, Jeff was forced to radically downsize the business and, most painfully, to close the site he first started at in Trafford Park, Manchester.
In 2004 Jeff established STEYNTON to utilise his skills as an independent leader of complex projects and he has been fully employed for over eight years with many, varied and distinguished Clients, usually working in consortium but sometimes as a specialist advisor to large, changing businesses.
Jeff Done relishes the challenges of complex, high risk, high reward projects, deploying independent leadership to guide consortia to success. The best groups of companies can be guided to performing cohesively and will acheive results which are greater than the sum of their separate parts.