History

The original company, Ritchies Equipment Limited began trading in 1963. During work on Scottish Hydro schemes in the mid 1960’s Edmund Nuttall Limited became a 51 percent shareholder. In the early 1970’s MQS Drilling, based in Clevedon was aquired. Then in 1978 when HBG acquired Edmund Nuttall Limited, Ritchies became a wholly owned subsidiary. Ritchies became a division of Edmund Nuttall Limited in 1986 and together with Scottish Civils moved to the present location in Kilsyth.

The Founding Directors were an explosives agent and a mining engineer. The company was formed to provide drilling and blasting services to the mining, quarrying and civil engineering industries. Ritchies grew until the late 1970’s providing these services but recognised the need to diversify as major infrastructure works reduced. Therefore, Ritchies became a major exploratory drilling contractor to then British Coal throughout the 1980’s.

From the late 1970’s, Ritchies diversified into rock stablisation and rock anchoring. The company then purchased assets of local site investigation contractor in 1984. Ritchies continued to diversify and widen scope of geotechnical activities through the 1990’s.

In 1999 a new office opened at Wigan, this was shortly followed by the acquisition of a sprayed concrete company, which relocated to Wigan in 2000. After the succesful completion of several contracts in the Republic of Ireland Ritchies opened a Dublin office in 2002.

With an increasing workload emanating from London & the South East Ritchies further strengthened the regional network in 2003 with the opening of a base at Crayford near Erith in Kent.

Following a number of overseas contracts including the prestigious Gibraltar Eastside Catchment contracts, BAM Ritchies overseas reputation continues to grow with an increasing volume of international work.

The completion of a £20 million complex investigation and grouting programme of Dounreay for DSRL (formally UKAEA) further demonstrates BAM Ritchies ability to undertake major technically demanding projects.

Turnover in 2008 reached £45 million. This was another year of continual growth achieved over the last decade. Employee numbers are now in excess of 350 with over fifty items of modern specialist plant.