Beck Developments

Source: Construction Digital

Date :26/10/2007 15:19:53

Quality Construction in the North of England

Managing Director Jon Connelly explains how flexibility and accessible locations are helping to maintain high standards

Written by Alison Withers & Produced by Nicholas Davies

The management team at Beck Developments Ltd has a combined experience in the property market of in excess of 100 years. The company is an independent, family-owned group. Owner and Chairman is Jon Wilkinson, who set up Haydock Finance Ltd in 1980 and Beck Developments Ltd in 1999. The two share the company’s HQ in Blackburn, Lancashire. Most recently, in 2005, Beck Developments Ltd, which focuses on land acquisition, set up its own construction division.

A unique position

Two key members of the operation are Dave Thomas, 41, Beck Developments Ltd’s Operations Director, and Jon Connelly, 39, who was appointed MD of the construction division in April 2007. Dave Thomas trained as a quantity surveyor and project manager, while Jon Connelly started his working life in construction at the age of 17 on a YTS scheme, as a trainee site manager. He joined Beck as a contracts manager and when I spoke to him, he was simultaneously celebrating his birthday and the completion of two years with the company.

Dave Thomas says: “I think we are unique in that we are a mixed use developer. For companies our size, a lot of people in our position are either residential or commercial, so we are more flexible because we can offer developments that are mixed use, or stand alone commercial or residential. Also we’re all very proud of our chairman whose reputation locally makes us a very credible company.”

The company combines creativity and innovation in its developments with a policy of building solid relationships with clients, partners and home-owners based on honesty, openness and trust. A key factor in the company’s undoubted success is that it tries to keep all its project sites within an hour’s drive of company headquarters, says Jon Connelly.

“It makes them easier to look after.” Another key ingredient is its strong social and environmental commitment. Says Jon Connelly: “The waste on the site is recycled. The skips don’t just go to land fill tips. Also, on all the planning applications now coming in, we have to show where all materials are coming from.” This includes demonstrating that timber, for example, is coming from sustainable forests as well as working to the required building regulations and, more recently, ensuring all new buildings conform to the energy efficiency requirements in the Government’s newly-launched and rather controversial Housing Information Packs.

While there have been some changes in personnel since the company was set up, says Dave Thomas, the structure has remained the same. However, the company is definitely evolving in terms of procedure and capabilities. Beck Developments occupies about a quarter of the group HQ and has benefited from being able to use the sophisticated and very secure IT system already in place for Haydock Finance Ltd. “We are constantly improving our IT capability and we now have a technician in the team.”

It has meant that the company has the ability to send out inquiries to sellers electronically complete with their own drawings and documents. “A lot of document control between ourselves and clients is done electronically.”

As the only major residential construction company in the Blackburn area they don’t have a large pool of skilled labour to draw on so apprenticeships are a crucial element of ensuring a steady supply. The company directly employs 20 head office staff and five site managers, but also uses about 50 sub- contractors. Says Jon Connelly: “We always try and keep trade apprenticeships running at all teams: plasterers, brick layers, joiners and so on. Our sub contractors now have at least seven apprentices and we have them at every site, including trainee site managers and quantity surveyors.” Most of them do day release courses at the local technical colleges.

The company has recently undergone a business review meeting to ensure its staffing structure is as it should be and expects to use more of the sophisticated set-up it currently has as the business grows and development schemes become more complex.

Steady as she goes for the future

Although the company does a certain amount of renovation of historic property, Dave Thomas sees it concentrating primarily on new build, with this representing 80 percent of its business going forward. While he feels for the present that the company doesn’t need to grow substantially bigger, the ideal is to be doing around 150 new residential units a year. He says that while there will always be an element of refurbishment it will probably not be more than 20 percent of the total business.

Growth is hard to estimate as it depends heavily on land availability for new build. With refurbishment projects, getting the costs right can be problematic where a building is either in a conservation area or listed in its own right. It can, he says, get to the point where planning requirements make such work uneconomic because the finished units can only command what people are prepared to pay on the open market. The problem, he says, is that planners have to work to policy criteria set centrally, which may not be financially viable at local level. Ideally, he says, there should be room for discussion on individual cases. However, he says, Beck Developments would look very carefully at the viability of any such schemes before deciding whether to get involved.

Looking to the future, he says: “As we get bigger we’ll need more technical staff and site staff. We have enough staff to meet the targets at the moment but in the future we might need to find more sub contractors.”

A steady course and modest growth to preserve the company’s extremely good local reputation is the plan – and that makes good, solid Northern common sense.