It is not the first and it will not be the last. But some good can come from ISG’s collapse last month, Caddick Construction managing director Paul Dodsworth tells Construction News.
When ISG went under, taking retentions, jobs and any semblance of certainty for many with it, Dodsworth took to social media to offer support to Caddick’s supply chain.
“I put a post out on social media that offered a hand to any of our supply chain that may have been adversely affected, and I think it had 400,000 odd impressions. That blew my brains,” he says.
Caddick also released retentions early to some of its subcontractors that were impacted by ISG’s collapse, and has taken on more than a dozen former ISG workers since it went under.
“It’s nice to be able to offer a hand – we are in growth,” Dodsworth says. “We did have recruitment requirements, and ISG had some really good people.”
‘The right customer, the right project’
Caddick Construction entered a new financial year on 1 September 2024.
Since its latest accounts were published, Dodsworth has been “really pleased” with the firm’s continued growth in turnover and profit, he tells CN. That, he says, is very much down to choosing “the right customer, the right project, the right contract terms and, indeed, the right supply chain”.
In its most recent accounts, for the year to 31 August 2023, Caddick Construction returned to a pre-tax profit, posting £7.4m – a sharp contrast to the £2.3m pre-tax loss the prior year. Turnover was also up, by nearly 40 per cent, which he puts down to a “disciplined approach” around growth.
Big breadth
To spread risk and open up more markets, one of Dodsworth’s key plans when he joined Caddick was to shift part of the business to accommodate more public work. So the new government’s focus on using infrastructure to spur on growth is a welcome boost, he says.
“We’ve made our way onto a good number of frameworks – we’ve been measured in our approach. But it transpired that we were going to have a change in government, so there was more work going to be delivered through the public sector.”
A new team – made up of new additions to Caddick Construction and existing staff – has now been set up to bid for more frameworks as they become available.
But “what really excites” Caddick Construction (and parent company Caddick Group) is the government’s commitment to building 1.5 million homes during this parliament. Caddick Group is firmly involved in the housing sector as both a construction contractor and a developer through Moda Living – a build-to-rent joint venture with real estate firm Generate Land.
The volume of remediation work coming up also presents an opportunity, Dodsworth says, adding that some firms “have run a million miles” from any work involving the Building Safety Act (BSA).
The firm’s focus on housing, coupled with Caddick Construction’s relatively new cladding expertise, means it is on the “front foot” around the BSA. It is currently remediating three sites (not built by Caddick) with dangerous cladding, all of them high-rise.
CCL Facades increased its turnover by about £10m in its most recent financial year, Dodsworth adds, and is expected to grow further, thanks partly to remediation work.
“The rigid quality standards that we have at Caddick mean we are there doing a service, so people can sort their mortgages out and sell their places and move on. We’re quite happy to get involved in this type of project,” he adds.
With remediation work yet to start on 2,394 buildings fitted with dangerous cladding (as of August), that work is set to come thick and fast.
