SOMETHING was wrong. After nine years of successfully completing major projects, AVQ, the audio visual specialists at The Bull Commercial Centre in Stockton-on-the-Forest, was simply treading water.

How could this be? Projects had included designing and installing training environments for the MoD for the introduction of the Apache helicopter and the Eurofighter and corporate boardrooms and videoconference suites for several blue chip companies. Yet AVQ simply wasn't growing.

Then Business Link was called in. It identified the underlying causes of poor performance and helped the company get a grant to appoint a business coach to guide the directors through a year-long programme.

The result was so phenomenal in organisation, target awareness and morale that AVQ Ltd is now pitching for both the Small Business Of The Year and Growth Business Of The Year titles in the 2006 Press Business Awards.

One result was the negotiation of AVQ's biggest-ever deal a £250,000 contract to provide classroom and lecture theatre audiovisual facilities at Middlesex University.

With confidence at an all-time high, the company not only achieved Investors in People status again with Business Link's help but also gained a SafeContractor certificate which boosted business further.

As reported in The Press in May, the firm was awarded the HSBC-sponsored Action International East of England Marketing Award.

The result? Predicted turnover for the year to next month is £750,000 an 83 per cent increase over the previous year and profitability is on target for a tenfold increase, from £3,500 to £35,000.

Geoff McAuley, managing director, said: "Equally, if not more importantly, is the effect this roller-coaster year has had on the general h3ealth and confidence of AVQ Ltd.

"In May 2005 our goal was a 25 per cent turnover increase during the following 12 months. We are on track to more than treble this target.

"This has given us the confidence to aim for £1.2 million turnover in 2006/07.

"This sort of prediction would hitherto have been beyond our wildest dreams."