Interview with Mick Dysart, LMD Managing Director
Interviewer:
Mick, your company, LMD Vacuum Excavation, is based in Staveley some five miles from the centre of Chesterfield. Has the area always been home?
Mick:
I have lived in Chesterfield all my life, mainly in the village of Brimington where I still live today.
Interviewer:
Vacuum excavators are expensive and complex pieces of equipment that have only been used in the UK for fifteen years or so. How did you get involved in such a specialist sector?
Mick:
Up until about five years ago I think you could have described vacuum excavators as specialist pieces of equipment. Today, however it is becoming the norm for excavation work on housing developments, utilities, motorways and more.
I saw my first vacuum excavator at the SED plant show back in 2006. It was a single fan with limited power and a ‘floppy’ suction arm. I wasn’t impressed at all as it was being demonstrated incorrectly.
I was working for M&B Groundbreaking at the time. In April 2007, M&B bought their first vacuum excavator, this time with a power arm and double fan. You could see the potential straight away. M&B immediately ordered two more, and then another five. Eight in total.
I still have three of the original M&B vacuum excavators in the LMD fleet and completely overhauled the first one last year.
Interviewer:
So how did you get from working from M&B to setting up LMD Vacuum Excavation?
Mick:
M&B were principally a gas mains replacement contractor and weren’t really set up to provide vacuum excavation as a separate service.
In July 2015, with the support of my wife Sandra, I took the plunge and purchased three vacuum excavators from various sources. Business was slow to build and by the end of 2017 we had only grown to five vacuum excavators, one of which was purchased from Dijon, France.
From 2018 onwards, however, we have achieved strong growth every year. We doubled the fleet to ten by the end of 2018 and doubled it again to twenty by the end of 2020.
In the eighteen months that have followed, we have grown to 40 vacuum excavators. The 40th was delivered on 3 August 2022. I am planning to have 44 vacuum excavators in the fleet by the end of 2022…and maybe more!
Interviewer:
What changes have you seen in the market since 2015 and how do you think it will develop in the years to come?
Mick:
The biggest change is that vacuum excavation is now considered to be best practice and is mandated by developers, utilities and highways contractors alike.
We are going through a period when there is not enough capacity in the market – even with forty vacuum excavators.
Interviewer:
What is LMD doing to ensure it stays ahead of the competition?
Mick:
LMD Vacuum Excavation is now big enough to employ its own training specialists, health and safety manager, and team of internal and site-based fitters. I am particularly proud of our apprenticeship programme for fitters as that is the route I followed after school, qualifying as a Motor Vehicle Technician through Chesterfield College.
Not only do we have the second largest vacuum excavation fleet in the UK, our fleet is the most diverse. We have powerful tracked excavators that can work on the railways or off-road; we have six-wheel drive vacuum excavators to cope with difficult terrain; left tip excavators for work on motorways and so much more. This diversity, our focus on achieving and retaining industry accreditations, and our commitment to the quality of service we provide; all these factors combined set us apart from the pack.
There is no respite, however. We have to continue to improve in every aspect of our operations. My goal is for LMD to become synonymous with quality vacuum excavation; the ‘go to’ providers. If we can achieve this, we’ll need a far bigger fleet in the years to come.
