Kendall Vegetation Services

Business Description

Kendall is a provider of vegetation management services to rural electric co-ops, investor-owned utilities and public municipal utilities located in Southeastern and Central United States. The Company’s services include tree trimming, mowing, line clearing, debris removal, storm restoration, among others, which must be performed regularly to ensure that power lines remain safe and operational.

Value Creation

First Institutional Capital

Partnered with a family-owned business with significant value creation potential to help drive operational improvements and continue to scale the business, directly leveraging the knowledge and relationships garnered from our experience with prior business services portfolio companies.

Data & Digital

In partnership with Blue Point, Kendall completed the rollout of cutting-edge field service technology to improve the speed and granularity of field reporting, as well as improved tracking and analytics to fleet utilization. We assisted in hiring the Company’s first IT Manager and Business Analytics Manager and successfully completed Blue Point’s cybersecurity roadmap.

Human Capital

A significant factor to Kendall’s operational and infrastructure development was the meaningful investment in human capital at the Company. We expanded and upgraded the management team, simplified the reporting structure, hired C-suite positions and filled in gaps across the organization. We also completed several HR related initiatives, which improved employee engagement and ultimately reduced turnover in a tight labor market.

Strategic, Operational & Organic Initiatives

We worked closely with the Kendall team to execute improvements which included the development of a fleet utilization report to provide timely insight into utilization rates to those responsible for ensuring efficiency, completed myriad best-in-class safety initiatives, rebranded the Company, revamped its website, as well as established formal estimate and quote formats, processes and procedures. We also focused on many initiatives to drive organic growth. These include but aren’t limited to launching a customer scorecard to monitor performance and identify growth areas, such as expanding the Company’s service offering to include clearing and developing a bid pricing process on new targets.