The name change partly reflected a shift in focus during the 1990s towards maintenance and facilities management services sectors, and this continued in the 2000s, buoyed by further acquisitions.

[2] A lighterage is the fee paid for the use of a lighter,[3] a large, open, flat bottomed barge, that could transport goods a short distance in shallow waters.

[6] By 1887 the company is recorded as occupying premises of a former Lloyd's Register Proving House and Chain-Testing Shed and subsequent Police Station at Preston Road, West India Docks.

The newspaper noted that their capabilities for handling this cargo had been highlighted during a trip, organized for delegates at the International Congress on Inland Navigation, to inspect the company's custom built vessels complete with cold chambers that enabled the meat to arrive at Smithfield Market frozen.

Mention is made in 1907 of the role played by its dredging craft in widening and deepening the navigation channel of the River Clyde to assist the maiden voyage of RMS Lusitania, then the world's biggest ship.

[11] A further example was reported on 9 June 1911[12] which in an article about major dredging works to the River Loire around the port of Nantes, France, noted that the company "had a special dredger constructed for the purpose".

[10] Company tug 'Danube' was transferred to Admiralty control and assisted a monitor through the Mediterranean en route to the Rufiji River delta, in present-day Tanzania, in order to destroy the German raider Konigsberg.

The role of the examination service crews was to board all merchant ships and trawlers entering ports or rivers, scrutinise their papers and if need be to search these craft for evidence of intent to help the enemy.

It was these vessels,[10] its tugs and barges, that were represented within the merchant marine fleet that took part in Operation Dynamo, commonly known as the Dunkirk evacuation during World War II, when in late May and early June 1940 a flotilla of 700 ships and boats assisted in the rescue and repatriation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and French troops.

[10] Company tug Danube V took part in pipelaying activities during July 1944, as part of Operation Pluto,[10] which brought together British scientists, oil companies and the armed forces in the construction of undersea oil pipelines under the English Channel between England and France to transport fuel supplies to Allied forces on the European continent.

[10] The company, by then named Tilbury Contracting Group Limited,[2] applied for admission of its shares onto the London Stock Exchange and trading commenced on 12 October 1966.

[43] In January 2018, Interserve warned that its debt was set to rise above £513m at the year-end due to redundancy costs and cash outflows from its legacy EfW projects.

[49] Legacy EfW contracts dragged the half-year results down, and the company's share price continued to slide, dropping to 21p in early December.

[50][51] At that time, Interserve was reported to be in rescue refinancing talks with banks and other debt holders preparing to incur losses in a debt-for-equity swap that would see public shareholders virtually wiped out.

[70] Its Citizen Services business was renationalised by the Ministry of Justice on 24 June 2021 as part of the UK Government's new model of probation delivery,[71] and on 6 October 2021, RMD Kwikform was sold to France's Altrad group for over £140m.

[80] By February 2023, Tilbury Douglas had resolved all of its energy-from-waste (EfW) issues and the Northumbrian Water case to achieve a "stable position".

In its accounts for the year to 31 December 2022, the company made an £8.3m profit on a turnover of £446.9m having incurred some £2m costs in restructuring the business after leaving the Interserve Group.

[82] In September 2024, Tilbury Douglas announced that CEO Paul Gandy would be standing down in November 2024, becoming president of the Chartered Institute of Building.

He will be replaced by former Bouygues UK chief operating officer Craig Tatton, who joined Interserve, now Tilbury Douglas, in 2017 and became COO in 2022.