With the new Government set on getting Britain building again, BusinessTime in Essex Editor, Peter Richardson, sat down with Phil Holding (above) and Steve Tilley (below), shareholding directors at Colchester-based Horizon Construction Group, to discuss if a building revival really is to be set on firm foundations.
It’s probably fair to say the economic trials and tribulations of the past eight years have been felt in the construction industry as painfully as anywhere.
Phil Holding, director at Horizon Construction Group, has been in the game long enough to have experienced the peaks and troughs of the building trade – and he says with more than an ounce of feeling he’s delighted to see the light of what’s been a pretty long and gloomy tunnel. “Brexit, Covid and European war contributing to a cost-of-living crisis have not been the best backdrop to engendering a thriving building sector these past five years, and I won’t deny there’s been some very challenging times,” he said.
It is, however, testimony to the professional way the company is run, that it comes out of the tunnel, blinking into the dawn of a new Government which is making all sorts of encouraging noises about building being at the core of its economic growth plans for the country, fit and raring to go with a number of high-profile projects on its books.
Horizon Construction Group came into existence 25 years ago (Phil says there’s been no time to think about any celebrations of its quarter-century landmark) and the company has a sister London-based company as well as its Colchester-based operation. Together employing 50 staff and with a current combined turnover of £40 million, it sits comfortably in the bracket of a middle sector construction firm – but it is a company which has always been ambitious.
It works across many sectors, including automotive (a number of Porsche, Jaguar Land Rover, BMW and Mercedes showrooms have been built by them), care and education, as well as residential schemes. Most recently, it won the £4.5 million contract from Colchester City Council to build the exciting new Digital Forum in Queen Street, its first significant public sector contract. It’s also working on a 62-bed care home in Hextable for a leading care provider and on its largest contract to date, a residential project in Wickford, building 122 housing association sector flats.
Firm foundations it would appear from which to move forward into the promised land of the new Government’s building utopia! “Well, the early signs are promising,” said Steve.
Anything which simplifies planning regulations and cuts the incubation period between a project being agreed in principle and work being able to start on site has to be welcomed. Overly-complicated planning legislation causes delays and delays can be very costly. These costs have to be suffered by someone, either the contractor by substantial delay to anticipated commencement dates, the client, or both end up swallowing additional costs which, in an already difficult and challenging market, can be done without. “As an example, we had the opportunity to bring in a senior site manager to work on a big large project. A person of this nature is hard to find so we wanted to pounce quickly. However, the project then suffered a further three-month delay which meant we had to incur his wages while we had to double-up on sites and keep him busy whilst waiting for the delayed project to start. This is just one example of how red tape causes delays and adds to costs.”
It also highlights another issue which has caused the construction industry considerable angst for some time now – the skills shortage. With a more than cursory look to the skies, Phil pulls no punches on the importance of this particular issue.
“In the office and, particularly, on site, we have a real challenge when it comes to finding properly qualified staff. It’s all very well having ambitious plans to build an additional 1.5 million homes, but where are all the tradespeople to build them? With the emphasis in recent years to encourage youngsters into further education, we’re really struggling to source good and interested tradespeople. The problem has only been worsened by Brexit. We desperately need to encourage the next generation into the construction industry. The move towards greater university education has seriously impacted on the number of youngsters opting for trades training. It’s essential we reverse this trend sooner rather than later,” said Phil.
To the mix of planning delays and skills shortages can be added, in Phil’s eyes, the issue of client commitment. “When we are asked to tender it is likely we will be one of four or five tenderers. The value of tendering can be quite high, with only a one in four or five chance of winning the tender. All I would ask is that once the successful tenderer has been selected, there is some sort of commitment from the client to then move ahead with the project as, all too often, a site is sold or the client simply says it’s over-budget – when, from the outset, they had the opportunity to seek a private quantity surveyor to produce a high-level cost plan to give an indication of costs. Yes, if I had a magic wand to change one thing, it would be to introduce some sort of client commitment,” he said.
In the absence of a magic wand, Phil will resort to relaying on the years of experience his company enjoys and its rock-solid reputation for providing top-quality work across multi sectors to ensure it reaps its share of the benefits which everyone hopes will arise from the expected opportunities of the coming years.
