Flynn were double winners in the recent CEF Construction Excellence Awards. Building Ireland spoke with Mark Spence, the company’s Business Development Director, to find out more about the Belfast-based firm.
Family businesses often turn out to be the best ones and with its deep roots, Flynn continues to provide personal service to clients while serving the community in which they are based, be it housing, schools, hospitals or roads.
The company is known for taking its responsibilities seriously and it relies upon their hard-earned reputation for honesty and integrity in maintaining the difference from less customer-focused businesses.
Formerly known as ‘MFS’ or ‘Maurice Flynn & Sons Ltd’, and now trading simply as ‘Flynn’, the company has grown to become one of the leading building and maintenance companies in Ireland.
Mark Spence is the company’s Business Development Director and has been part of the team for five years during which time the company has grown and invested in its own future direction.
He gave us the lowdown on what they’re all about and also told us about some of the projects they’re currently working on.
“We’re based in Saunders House, Springbank Industrial Estate, Belfast and the business Maurice started has been operating for over 40 years,” Mark outlined.
“There’s around 250 directly employed staff here and many more than that supported through our extensive supply chain. In 2015, we realised we were overly dependent on the public sector and needed to diversify our client base, so we took the decision to re-brand and update the business image in an effort to better represent the range of skills and services we offer.
“ With the assistance of InvestNI, we embarked on rolling out the rebrand in 2016, including referring to ourselves now as simply ‘Flynn’. Maurice Flynn founded the company and is still heavily involved today and even selected the rebrand colour schemes and our new strapline, ‘Building and Maintaining Standards’. His son Aidan is the Managing Director and he has ambitious plans for continuing to take the company to new heights.”
Flynn are main contractors on new-build and refurbishment projects in health, education, housing, commercial and retail and have over more than four decades of experience in delivering excellence.
The company’s latest new-build £2m school in Newcastle, Co Down has been nominated for numerous awards as has their recent refurbishment of the Waterfront Hall in Belfast.
Flynn has over the years developed meaningful and lasting relationships with likeminded architects, QSs and project management firms to create dynamic and successful teams for projects that matter.
The company prides itself on the quality of the service delivered and the professionalism of their 250 staff members, underlined by an industry-leading training and development programme and the award in 2016 of Silver Investors in People.
2017 is lining up to be an exciting year for Flynn.
“Business has been steady in 2016,” Mark stated. “We’ve invested quite heavily in business development this year and, by doing that, we have highlighted what Flynn are capable of doing and hopefully reached out to potential clients who were not aware of our breadth of experience.
“Yes, we can build anything from schools to houses to hospitals but these same skills are highly transferable to the private sector as well. At the moment, most of our work is north of the border and that’s something that we want to change going forward, as we believe we can offer a strong value proposition to meet the growing demand across the entire island.
”Recent projects include a £4m new build grade-A government office building, a £1.5m listed building refurbishment at the Belfast Royal Academy and minor works for a supermarket chain in Dublin.”
At the present time, Flynn are focussing on two housing developments that are in the post-planning stage, an executive development in east Belfast and a social housing development in the north of the city.
They’re also working towards securing a new-build supermarket project for 2017, which the development director “couldn’t name just yet”.
Needless to say, excellent customer care is central to everything that Flynn do.
As well as every member of staff receiving tailored customer care training, the company’s ISO9001 Quality Management procedures are specifically written for working in and around occupied homes, schools, offices and hospitals. Understanding the needs and concerns of the customer is a pre-requisite to delivering a service that fulfils their expectations.
The company have trained client-facing staff to deal effectively and personally with individual clients to gain an understanding of their individual and customer needs. Their role is to ensure that there is a continuous focus on the end user and to ensure that the client’s and end-user’s experience of the service provided is a positive one.
As a result, Flynn consistently returns excellent client satisfaction results and securing repeat work from some of the most satisfied clients in the industry.
“We have a track record of getting the job done to the highest standard,” Mark stated. “Quality of work is everything and underpins the company’s roots, values and ethos. I think that’s a large part of the reason why our clients keep coming back to us.”
Flynn consider themselves fortunate to work with many of the leading public services organisations in the region and have built relationships based on trust, personal involvement and commitment to deliver quality for their clients.
The quality of their work was recognised at June’s Irish Construction Industry Awards in Dublin where Flynn received nominations in three categories and in October’s CEF Awards in Belfast when they were nominated for four and took home two awards.
Flynn came out on top in the Health & Safety Award and the Training Award categories, having also been shortlisted in the Community Construction category for its work on the Waterfront Hall refurbishment and in the Education Construction category for the St Joseph’s Carnacaville Primary School project.
It was a night to remember, especially when you consider that it had been the second time in the last three years that the company had won the Training Award. Underlining that double success, the very next day Flynn would be awarded a Distinction at the annual All Ireland Safety Awards in Killarney, run by National Irish Safety Organisation (NISO) in conjunction with Northern Ireland Safety Group (NISG).
Over the past 40 years Flynn has continued to grow strongly and, against the general industry decline, and the loss of some long established household names, the company’s share of the market has increased.
This is due to their resounding commitment to quality, accountability and delivery, which is shared with their clients, the company continues to build and maintain standards year on year and bring its personal approach to new markets and clients.
Flynn
Saunders House,
Springbank Industrial Estate,
2 Springbank Road,
Belfast BT17 0QL
Tel: 048 9030 3800
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: mauriceflynn.com
Taken from Building Ireland Magazine, February 2017, Vol 3 No 2
