The growth enjoyed by Northern Ireland home builder McKnight Contractors Ltd has surpassed the expectations of Managing Director Gareth McKnight. Working within a 30-mile radius of its County Down headquarters, the company has developed an enviable reputation for the delivery of quality homes.
Specialising in turnkey private houses, McKnight Contractors Ltd provide a skilled and reliable team that its clients can trust and Gareth McKnight personally ensures every project is finished to the highest standard. The 42-year-old took over the reins of the family business from his father Kenneth who sadly passed away four years ago.
“My father set up the business in 1996,” Gareth outlined in conversation with Building Ireland. “I worked alongside him and then in 2004 he handed the business over to me due to health reasons.
“McKnight Contractors Ltd was formed that year and we started off doing small private houses, wee bungalows for example, nothing too major.
“Every year since then, between buying the odd private site and building houses on it and selling, things have grown immensely. We have gone from doing a £150,000 house to doing a £450,000 house now. Things have just got bigger and bigger and bigger.
“It’s not that I wanted it to get bigger, it has just grown organically every year. Every year it gets busier and the busier it gets, the more work you have to turn away because you can’t do it all.
“Today we specialise in private new builds, middle of the range stuff around the £350,000 to £450,000 market.”
McKnight Contractors Ltd is committed to providing an unrivalled standard of customer service, from initial enquiry through to build. Clients can rest safe in the knowledge that they are dealing with an established house builder with a proven track record of delivering on its promises.
The company’s current workload is testimony to that. “We’ve too many!” replied Gareth when asked about the current projects they are working on. He elaborated further: “We have eight private homes on the go at the minute.
“We are very happy with how the business is going. Other than the torture of things it is okay but you have to get torture along with it!” he quipped. “That comes with the territory unfortunately.”
To help him cope with the ‘torture’, Gareth is ably assisted in the day-to-day running of the ever-burgeoning company by his wife Charlene and ‘best mate’ John Hutchinson.
“We have four full-time employees on the books but the majority of my boys are self-employed. I use the same men all the time, I don’t jump from one to another, and that means I know what I am getting. They are all highly skilled and we have developed good working relationships.”
As a consequence, McKnight Contractors Ltd boast the capabilities to offer their clients turnkey projects and that is a source of great pride for the Managing Director.
“We can take a project from green field through to finished project,” he remarked.
Looking ahead to the future, Gareth has no ambitions to expand the business further but if the past few years have taught him anything, it’s that further growth might be outside of his control. There is a sense of inevitably surrounding the future trajectory of McKnight Contractor Ltd’s graph.
“The growth of the company to date has been over and beyond expectations,” Gareth admitted. “I never once thought it was going to end up turning out like this at all.
“I think things are big enough at the minute but while you say every year it is not going to get any bigger, it usually does to be fair. It is definitely not going to get any smaller. There has been a big amount of new stuff bought in the last few years, between plant, diggers, dump trailers, teleporters, machines and tools, to move the company forward.
“As I said, things are big enough at the minute as far as I would be concerned but you never know what the future holds in store!”
To talk to Gareth about your new build requirements or find out more about the services his company offers, feel free to contact him at the number below.
McKnight Contractors Ltd
17 Ballyroney Rd
Rathfriland
Newry
County Down
BT34 5NQ
Mob: +44(0)7801450473
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, July, Vol 7 No 7
