Fairgrove Homes

Source: Construction Digital

Date :23/10/2007 14:27:32

Homes for the future

Managing Director Steve Midgley tells Exec UK about the customer focused culture at Fairgrove Homes

Written by Alison Withers & Produced by Nicholas Davies

Steve Midgley, 50, MD of Fairgrove Homes Ltd is a founder member of the family-owned company. He started his career as a management trainee with a large timber group and from there graduated to kitchens and bathrooms, before moving into house building.

He had worked for a similar sized family-owned house building company for ten years before starting up Fairgrove. “I do enjoy my job but it’s changed dramatically over the last twelve years because originally my wife and I did everything apart from the actual construction,” he says. “Now we have 25 people plus sub-contractors, so whereas I used to do everything in a much more hands on way, now I spend my time motivating others.”

Fairgrove’s preferred development is small to medium detached new family homes and the company has developments at various stages along the M1 corridor stretching from Loughborough, Leicestershire, to Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, though its sphere of operations is across three counties (including Derbyshire). It has also restored old buildings. The company is based in Ilkeston and has recently opened a second division, called Plot2Build which specialises in helping people through the whole process of self build housing, from land acquisition and finance to planning permission and organising contractors.

Customer focus

The company has recently appointed Richard Smith, who has been with them virtually since the company’s beginnings, to be its new Operations Director. Steve Midgley says this appointment will allow him to spend more time on strategic issues.

Fairgrove is currently building around 50 homes a year and in recent years the focus has moved from edge of town estates to town houses on brownfield infill sites. “We’re always on small sites - 31 is the biggest development we’ve done on one site. A lot more are around the ten to 15 mark. We treat house building more as a retail operation, it’s a customer focussed business than just a construction one,” Midgley explains.

The company’s website is currently inviting people interested in joining focus groups and it has a tradition of keeping customers informed at every stage of their new home’s development.

IT is central to its office processes, he says, right through from sales people on site to site managers. “We’re very proactive in tracking project progress but also to help us inform customers when we have available what they’re looking for.”

Happily, he says, the company doesn’t have a high turnover of staff, because it makes a lot of effort securing the right people in the first place. But it also takes care to ensure they can develop their skills and careers: “We are doing quite a bit on management development and IT training, enabling people to develop. We are currently sponsoring two people through part time university courses. It benefits us and them and we do involve people greatly in everything.” The company also supports any sub-contractors which are running apprenticeship schemes and contributes to them.

There’s a strong emphasis on supporting local charities and has supported the Rainbow Childrens’ Hospice, based in Loughborough for two years. It has also supported the County Air Ambulance for two years and is currently looking at who will be the recipient of its next two years of support from the company’s annual charity golf match, and other fund raising activities.

Developments in the pipeline

Steve Midgley is happy with the company’s current management team, especially now he has an Operations Director in place, but doesn’t rule out further developments. “We’re constantly looking at ideas and ways to make things better. We are facing challenges in the future and might have to go about building quite differently.” He is referring, of course, to the Government’s target for sustainable homes and zero carbon emissions and explains there are six levels in the Code for Sustainable Homes, with level six being zero emissions.

Level four aims for 44 percent more efficiency than current buildings. This is seen as a target which the building industry may be able to reach on its own, without external energy efficiency support such as wind turbines in the garden. He says: “Beyond level four it seems to be considered that we won’t get there without the energy and domestic appliance industries doing something as well. You can design for anything but you are not going to get it all in use until those other things come on board.”

In the meantime the focus for his industry will be on insulation and air tightness, building in the ventilation buildings need to “breathe” but without the heat going out. However, he says, there’s a cost factor in all this in that it could currently cost an extra £35,000 to build a completely zero carbon emission house and that’s not something people are going to be able to afford or be willing to pay – even if the housing finance market would lend it, especially to first time buyers. Given the length of time it takes to find and acquire land and planning permissions, however, which can add up to around three years or more, the effort has to start now, he believes, since the Government plans for this strategy to become legislation and fully in place by 2016. Fairgrove’s strategy will therefore be to try things out on the upper end of the market then incorporate it on smaller mass-build: “If we can make it work, then we can bring down the costs”.

It is also possible that the new Plot2Build division will play a part in this. Still in its first year, there is potential for this side of the business to develop and Steve Midgley believes it’s likely that people keen on self-build are also quite keen on - and prepared to try - different methods of improving energy efficiency. His aim is to grow this division steadily to building 50 houses a year and to grow Fairgrove Homes, also steadily, to around 100 a year. In time the company will bring in a requirement for materials certificates tracking things like wood right from source i.e. sustainable forests.