Making an impact and saving lives with dss+

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Audio Transcript

Tim Smallbone

Hello and welcome to Inflexion Point, the podcast that explores those crucial moments in a company's journey that change the trajectory of success. Through conversations with founders and entrepreneurs, we'll explore what those moments look like and how to recognise and harness them. And in this episode, we'll learn about dss+, the global operations management consultancy dedicated to helping clients achieve sustainable growth. Initially known for safety consulting, the company now provides comprehensive risk management solutions, ESG consulting, and digital transformation services. This remarkable diversification has allowed dss+ to cater to a much wider range of industries across 40 different regions.

Davide Vassallo

I think we want the trust of our clients because we have an impact, right? The impact is about saving lives.

Isabelle Pagnotta

It's a company that is truly international with a very good purpose.

Tim Smallbone

I'm Tim Smallbone, and in my 20 years as a partner at Inflexion, I've been lucky enough to witness a huge number of transformational moments that are a part of every success story, and dss+ is no different. And so I'm delighted to welcome Chief Executive Davide Vassallo and Inflexion Partner Isabelle Pagnotta, who sat on the board of dss+ since our investment in 2023. Welcome to you both. Thanks for joining me. Davide, I wonder if I could turn to you first. If you could just tell us what all this means. Risk management solutions, ESG consulting, digital transformation services. What does the company do and why do our clients value us?

Davide Vassallo

Thank you, Tim. It's a pleasure to be here. So what we do is we help our clients to make the future safer and more sustainable. And we do this through consulting services. We offer our knowledge, our capabilities, our tools to help them better execute their businesses. In particular, in the kinds of industries where there are big risks related to the operations and supply chain.

Tim Smallbone

You started off as a health and safety consultant, is that right?

Davide Vassallo

Yes, our legacy has very deep roots because we started this business, DuPont started this business as one of the large chemical manufacturing companies. And they started to create the capability to operate very hazardous processes. And then one day, someone decided in the late 60s, Someone decided that this kind of capability could be of great value to many companies outside. So DuPont decided to build a business around this knowledge and this experience.

Tim Smallbone

Which was an internal service initiative.

Davide Vassallo

It was an internal service business starting in the late 60s. So if we fast forward the story, in 2019, we carved out the business and we created a standalone company that today we call dss+.

Tim Smallbone

How did it go from being health and safety to advising on businesses with a purpose? There's been a big change in the breadth of what you do.

Davide Vassallo

Yes, because I think it's part of the evolution of businesses, industries, and society. So today, I would say there is much more awareness and care for people, for risks. There is quite a wide range of regulation that is helping us to stay on track, helping our clients to stay on track. So we evolved from providing safety best practices to help our clients to transform their organization. So what we do with our clients is really we help them to build a capability to sustain the performance. It could be safety and risk management performance, but could be also operational performance, delivering their production. And since probably the last three or four years, helping our clients to be more sustainable, dealing with their emissions, their waste, their energy consumption, and of course, try to reduce the footprint of their operations.

Tim Smallbone

And Isabelle, just turn to you. How did you first come into contact with the business?

Isabelle Pagnotta

I came into contact with the business because we were very keen to invest and back a management team in the consulting segment. And when we did our homework, we realized that actually dss+ was one of the best companies in its market. And we decided that we really wanted to buy it. So Davide and I met more than two years ago. And then we got to know the company better. And the more we were learning about it, the more excited we got, because it's a company that is truly international with a very good purpose, the purpose of saving lives. So that's what makes a big difference for us, because as private equity buyers, we also want to create good in addition to investing money for our investors. And we also loved the fact that the company had a great management team, very ambitious, charismatic CEO. And actually, we just wanted to accelerate the growth of this company because the company is in a very fragmented market. And we thought, well, if we can accelerate the growth by, you know, helping them make a number of acquisitions, we're going to be able to maybe triple the size of this company.

Tim Smallbone

So there's been a number of inflection points along the way. The business started off just providing an internal service, then expanded to provide an external service. That presumably was before your time, you referenced it back to being to the 60s. But then it developed a wide range of different services, and then went through this big change coming out from under DuPont's wing. Just tell me about that.

Davide Vassallo

That was a great experience personally, because I was hired by DuPont to transform this business. My personal background is management consulting. I'm an environmental engineer by training. DuPont wanted to do something with this business, and I was hired as a kind of head of strategy. And the transformation was designed with many people supporting the idea that a committed management team with great capabilities to make the future safer and more sustainable was an enterprise. So we started to envision an enterprise, and we did a carve out from DuPont. When we did the carve-out, we were 600 people. Today, we are 1,600 people operating every day in the field. And the opportunity is huge. If you think of it, every year, there are 2.7 million people who pass away from work-related incidents or illness. And this number, unfortunately, is not going down. Every year 2.7. 2.7 million people, which is probably half of London, disappearing from the planet. These are people who go to work in the morning and they don't come back in the evening to the families.
Tim Smallbone

What can be done to change that? I don't think people are aware of such a huge number.

Davide Vassallo

Tim, it's shocking. It's shocking. So every supply chain that is bringing product or services in your home is generating across the supply chain a number of injuries, if not fatalities or illness in the workers. Why? Regulation is not stringent enough or is not enforced. The level of risk awareness it's different by country, by industry, by culture, by geography. There are many, many different reasons. What I can say from a positive side, leaders sitting in my same position, in your positions, are much more aware that in 2024, it's not tolerable anymore to run operations that are not environmentally sustainable and safe for the workers. So these two elements are on the table of every decision maker on this planet. The difference is that some decision makers have the motivation or the incentive or the push to do something, others less. It's dss+ responsibility and Inflexion as a main investor in dss+ to advocate for more. Why are we leading the market? Because we are not shying away from telling the truth to our clients. Do they all listen? Some better than others, but look, I work with many, many leaders around the world. I think that in private conversation, everybody is acknowledging that we can do something better. It's not enough to do well as a business. We have been trained for many, many years, but if you do well, you know, if you generate the profit, if you return on the investment to your investors, you are a good leader. That's not enough anymore. You need to do well and do good.

Tim Smallbone

That's a really interesting thought. Is it because you can't get the good employees if you're not doing good at the same time? Is it because your customers aren't interested? And what is it that's the driver there?

Davide Vassallo

It's a great question, Tim, because in every industry it's different. In some industries, you're putting your licence to operate at risk. You can lose it, right? An incident can put you out of the market. In other industries, you can lose your customers because they don't want to touch the products that are coming from certain supply chains or certain production facilities because they are not aligned with their personal ethical values. You can lose investors. Investors are looking, where do I put my money? I won't put my money in a company that is not only doing well today, but they have everything that is required to do something good for the long term. So I think there is a shift in the economy, a shift in the society, that it's recognizing a premium to companies that are doing well and good at the same time.

Tim Smallbone

Presumably you're only talking to the companies that already get it, for want of a better way of putting it. I'm sort of wondering, is there a correlation between companies that are trying to do good And also therefore making more money. Is there a tension there?

Davide Vassallo

So as I said, I'm inspired by my job, but I'm a very rational person. And I know that if I want to continue to do good, I need to do well. That's, I needed to finance my good, right? We are not an NGO. I'm not, I don't, I'm not any ideologist. I'm a CEO, I'm a business manager. I do think so because they are generating a positive impact to all the stakeholders that I have to deal with. I think about dss+, we have our solutions, our capability, are helping the client to do good, and the portion of value that we capture for ourselves is helping us as a company to do well and continue to reinvest in the growth of the business. The partnership with Inflexion in the last 12 months is a statement, it's telling this story. We are using some of your resources to grow a business that has a positive impact on the society. And what we have in return is growth.

Tim Smallbone

At Inflexion, Isabelle, we're looking for businesses that aren't just trying to be compliant, but actually are going to be leaders in these fields. Do you see a correlation between the two with companies that focus on these issues, on making a difference, and being more profitable?

Isabelle Pagnotta

Yes, absolutely. I think that was one of the reasons why we decided to invest in dss+, because dss+ is a leader in health and safety and sustainability. And we realized that actually it is the name that comes back when you ask clients who's best at the job. So I do think that being the market leader, you have a sort of aura that no one else has. And I think dss+ is the uncontested market leader in its domain. Now, I think what's great is that I think your strong recognition in health and safety has helped you grow more into sustainability now, which is fantastic because now we are able to grow in new verticals.

Davide Vassallo

Yeah, that's a great point because I think we want the trust of our clients, because when we work with them, we have an impact, right? Impact is about saving lives, right? The visible, tangible results that we deliver to our clients. So this trust now is turning into opportunities to support them, not only on safety and risk management, but in other areas like sustainability or operational excellence. So I think that in our journey, we are still at the infancy of dss+, because we have an incredible heritage, and we are recognised as market leaders in a market that is growing. And we are quickly diversifying our solutions to be able to offer to our clients more with the same philosophy. And I have also to say that I'm amazed because many of our clients — blue chip companies, Fortune 100, or national champions in some place around the world, after working together for a while, we start to establish the kind of relationship that goes beyond the commercial. And that is because of the purpose. They understand that we are driven by a genuine passion for doing a good job. And so at that point, we are almost a partner. There is no longer just a commercial relationship. It's a personal relationship. Because what is sticky is really that at the core, at the center of the table of the discussion with the clients, there is always people, the care for their people, for their workers. So it's a powerful story.

Tim Smallbone

Was there a moment where you had a thought, I know, we can do this, and change the direction of the company in the direction of the sustainability that you've been describing?

Davide Vassallo

Two moments are really very clear in my head that changed the course of history as a company in the last few years. The first one was when together with my colleagues, senior managers in DuPont Sustainable Solutions, we decided that separating from DuPont was a good decision. We had to go back to our families and discuss our investment and put our life savings and careers at risk to move from being executives in a large American corporation to be owners and entrepreneurs. That's a big change of life. That's a true inflection moment. Yes, you can speak with my wife and she will tell you a lot about this. But that's the inflection moment, number one. The second big moment is what I think we are living today. It's happening in the last few months. Now we realize that we can change at scale so that our experience, our capabilities, our motivation and passion can influence many more people.

Tim Smallbone

To do that, to be that individual at the center of that relationship, you have to be a pretty driven person yourself. And presumably, with such a broad range of qualifications required internationally, how hard is it to get people who can do all of what you're describing? Clearly you do, you live and breathe it, but that's an ask.

Davide Vassallo

No, thank you, Tim. Yes. Yes, but it's a very rewarding job because every client who sends me a message saying, "Davide, thank you, because your team did an excellent job and we see the results, we see the performance improving" — it's a great recognition for me personally, for the people, for the organization. There are some skills that are foundational in this job. One is you need to be passionate. It's not a nine-to-five job. So it's a full-time, full-life job. You need to put, as I say, the people at the center. They are not just a tool. They are the asset. They are the value that we try to unleash when we work with our clients. You need to be very dedicated because it's taking time. And yeah, it's a combination of empathy, business acumen, technical expertise. The good news is that we build this at an organisational level. So we are not looking for one person with all those qualities. We build teams. We build teams where we can take the best of each one of our team members and put them in front of clients. It's funny now because in the transformation of dss+, we have our engineers. They have worked in operations for 20, 30, 40 years. So they have an incredible industrial experience, unmatched in the market. And then we have a group of management consultants who are able to speak the language of the clients, and understand how to pull together a plan, how to pull together an improvement journey, a cultural transformation journey. And then we have a third group of people that are coming with the sustainability offering that are even more motivated about doing something good. So dss+ today is a nice melting pot — a very diverse group of people.

Tim Smallbone

So your teams are very colorful in terms of mix of experience?

Davide Vassallo

It's very colourful, very vocal, very opinionated, very demanding, but it's part of the game. We consider ourselves an organisation that is really striving for excellence because the outcome of our projects are lives saved.

Tim Smallbone

So the initial hook, the reason people come to you initially, is a health and safety offer?

Davide Vassallo

Less and less. Less and less. It was health and safety five years ago when we did the carve out from DuPont. Today is more the trust. You know, it's a good question because it's the trust that we are capable of driving change. And it doesn't matter what is the technical nature of the change. It could be safety, it could be environment, it could be the way you run your operations. But it's about changing the mindset and the behaviours of the people, to change the culture of the company. So that trust is helping us to cross-sell in different technical domains.

Tim Smallbone

A lot of people have a view of management consultants: they come in, they talk a good game and they disappear. I just wanted to pick up on what you've just said — actually making it happen is what differentiates dss+. You follow through and make the change happen.

Davide Vassallo

Absolutely, yes. So our management consulting services are about implementation, are not about strategy or road mapping. We can do that, but our core is to be in the field with the clients, changing the behaviours, changing the processes, changing the way they do business. And it's also another characteristic of dss+ is that we do this from the boardroom to the workshop floor. back and forward. Because most companies out there, the board is missing the connection with the operating reality. And we are consultants that can understand the operating reality, go back to the board, help the board to take a decision, and cascade it into the organisation.

Tim Smallbone

This may be an unfair question because it's going back a few years since you were... owned by a large US corporate, but now you have a private equity investor. Are you able to see a difference in ethos, a different approach? Maybe time's just moved on, so it's not a fair question, but I don't know if you see a difference.

Davide Vassallo

Look, first of all, our legacy is a key component of our culture, because we were part of a large industrial manufacturing global company, and we learned a lot. So our roots are solid because we grew up in that kind of educational environment, if you want, from a business standpoint and from a value standpoint. Private equity is the perfect model for a company like us, because we were missing agility in the DuPont days. Today we have agility. We were missing speed. Today we have speed. We were also missing some care. Today we are independent and we have a board and investors that care about our business. At the time of DuPont, we were one business in a portfolio of 40. So that level of attention and care was different. But I think that when I try to explain to the people we hire who we are, I tell them: look, we are people coming with a very strong legacy, tradition and knowledge, venturing into a world of entrepreneurs, innovators and disruptors. We fly high with our thinking, but we have a very solid foundation.

Tim Smallbone

Isabelle, we invest in growing businesses. How have we helped the company grow since we've invested?

Isabelle Pagnotta

We've worked with management to really accelerate M&A, I would say. And actually, since we've owned the company, we've completed three acquisitions, including one that is quite chunky very recently. And as Davide knows, we are even keen to back management to do a transformational acquisition. So the sky is the limit for us, because we love the space. We think that there is a lot to do and we want to help dss+ really be, as I said before, much bigger.

Tim Smallbone

Tell me about the acquisitions you've done. How have they changed our business?

Davide Vassallo

So first of all, I make one step back because what Isabelle said is very important. If you look at... the model of management partnering with a private equity. If you are ambitious and you want to hit your purpose, if you want to have an impact at scale in consulting, you need to be big, right? That's my learning after many years in consulting. To be big, you need a partner that can encourage you, support you to do what Isabelle was describing, right? to accelerate the growth and expand your ambitions. And I think that is what we have done together, really expanding the ambition of DSS. And then you learn that growing organically, as we are doing, is great. So we have a very high growth from an organic standpoint. But to have a bigger impact, acquisitions are a fantastic strategy. We are in a very fragmented market. There is an economy of scale when you build larger consulting organizations that can unlock even more value. But in the end, all of our strategy has the same goal. We want to do more good so we can do more well. And that is what we are doing organically and through M&A. So to speak about the three acquisitions we made, different nature. Two acquisitions are helping us enter new industries with new services. They are helping us diversify our portfolio and build an even more resilient organisation. The third is market consolidation, because we acquired one of our strongest competitors in the European market. So we have different M&A strategies that are complementary to our organic growth.

Tim Smallbone

Big fundamentals for growth for us to explore.

Davide Vassallo

Absolutely. What else can we do?

Isabelle Pagnotta

What else can we do? Well, I think we need to keep on innovating and think about new adjacencies where to grow. When I say the sky is the limit, I truly believe it. I think DSS+ has a really strong brand and we can now think about moving into different types of verticals, and also target new industry verticals. There is no reason why we can't go into electronics, for example, and other sorts of industries with supply chain issues.

Tim Smallbone

What's the next step from your point of view?

Davide Vassallo

That's a great question, Tim. I think this business is five years old with 58 years of legacy. We have established ourselves in the market with a new brand. We are diversifying our capabilities. We are expanding beyond our core traditional industries into new ones. So all of these processes are in place. Now the next big milestone is really to have an impact at a systemic level. So we need to move, and it's in our strategy, to move from helping one client at a time to helping an entire industry, if not an entire country.

Tim Smallbone

So the government is the client.

Davide Vassallo

Could be government, could be private association of companies that have the desire and ambition to change. I don't want to sound arrogant or too ambitious, but I think we can really put on the market. a new brand that is leading at global level.

Tim Smallbone

Not short on ambition.

Davide Vassallo

No, we're not.

Tim Smallbone

So the company's been through a number of transformations through its life, which you've led it through. The business is now doing so much more than just health and safety consulting. And there's so much more to go at. It's a fascinating story. That's it for this episode. Many thanks to Davide and Isabelle for joining me. Remember to subscribe to Inflexion Point wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode. And of course, you can listen back to previous instalments, including the extraordinary story of GOAT, the world-leading influencer marketing agency. Thanks for listening.

About the episode

Inflexion Point tells the story of dss+, the global consultancy that helps companies run safer, more sustainable operations, and how it built a business with saving lives at its core. Host Tim Smallbone is joined by Chief Executive Davide Vassallo, the environmental engineer who was brought in to transform the business and helped carve it out from DuPont, and Isabelle Pagnotta, the Inflexion partner who has sat on the board since the 2023 investment. They reflect on the moments that shaped it: the late 1960s beginnings inside DuPont, when a chemicals giant began teaching other companies to handle hazardous operations, the 2019 carve out that turned a corporate division into a standalone company, the diversification from health and safety into sustainability, operational excellence and digital transformation, and the acquisitions now scaling the business across a fragmented market. Along the way, they talk about growing from 600 to 1,600 people across 40 regions, why leaders can no longer simply do well but must do good too, the 2.7 million people who die each year from work related incidents and illness, and the ambition to move from helping one client at a time towards changing entire industries.