Based in Glenties, Co Donegal, OTL Construction Ltd has developed a glowing reputation for providing its clients with an excellent service which is second to none. Building Ireland touched base with its Managing Director, Tara Connaghan, to find out all about what is a thriving business up in the North West.
Business is good right now at OTL Construction Ltd and the plan for Tara Connaghan and her team up in Glenties, Co Donegal is to try and keep things that way right through to 2022 and beyond.
Established in September 2015, the company’s origins date back a further two generations to a time when Tara’s grandfather, Manus Connaghan, had set-up his own construction venture and had grown the business year on year.
Sure enough, from there Tara’s father, Frank Connaghan, would take over the running of his father’s company and develop it further catering for both domestic and commercial clients before his untimely passing in 2014.
Since then, Tara has been heading up the family business and was good enough to take the time recently to outline to Building Ireland what OTL Construction Ltd is all about.
“We’re based in Glenties, Co Donegal and OTL Construction itself was established in September 2015,” she outlined.
“It grew out of my dad’s company and, I guess really, it would be a third-generation business because his father, my grandfather, had it before him.
“When my dad died in September 2014, I took over the company a week after he passed away.”
At the time, it was quite the life changing experience for Tara Connaghan.
In the days following her father’s passing, she would be preparing to take on the running of his company and all that came with it.
Her own career background wouldn’t follow a straight path to running a construction business but, as she outlined, she would have excellent help during those first few initial transitional months.
“I came into the business from a music background,” Tara explained. “I’m a traditional musician, a fiddle player, that has travelled the world over and I was the CEO of a national Arts Festival, so taking over this business was a bit of a change for me to say the least, but I had great help with the staff that were there and I had good experience in my previous CEO role too so I see it as more of a side step than a jolt to the system.
“We had people that had been working here for years, even decades, and they knew the contracts inside out and knew what they were doing and in the years prior to my dad’s passing I was slowly being integrated into the business on an ad-lib basis in the contract management side. He needed someone with good IT skills too and it really helped develop a good father-daughter bond connecting over the business. I wish we could have had more time to work together on a full time basis as I think we could have been a formidable team because we were great at bouncing ideas off each other and he was a very, very encouraging father.
“It took a while to get over the grief while trying to learn the ropes of a new industry, never mind that there aren’t too many females in this country running construction companies, if any, but his influence and memory was all around and rather than focus on grieving and obstacles, I tried to view the continuation of the business as a celebration of his life and achievements,” she said.
Fast-forward six-and-a-half years and Tara still proudly heads up OTL Construction, a company which employs approximately 10 full-time staff, and she is glad to report that business is going strong, even in these unprecedented times.
The Covid-19 pandemic, and the government restrictions which have followed in an effort to combat the spread of the virus, have impacted businesses all over the country and OTL Construction are no different.
The Spring of 2020 saw a two-and-a-half-month lockdown from March until May which shutdown the construction industry overnight. As well as that, the start of 2021 saw all of those projects which were deemed non-essential by the government grounded to a halt from the start of the year into the Spring.
“We had seven weeks where we weren’t working at all during the first lockdown. I did enjoy having a few weeks off, even if I feel guilty about admitting that as a lot of people are still waiting to get back to work but running your own business can mean that you often forget to take time off so the imposed paid time off was a welcome reset for my body and brain,” said Tara.
“Since we got back at it on May 18th, we were busy again and, to be honest, we have been flat out since.”
With ESB being its main client, OTL Construction has had essential works to concentrate on since the first lockdown was lifted on May, 18, 2020 and the projects continue to flow almost 12 months later.
Business is good and, as Tara herself puts it, ESB is an excellent client to work for week in, week out.
“Our main client would be ESB and the majority of our contracts are with them on a couple of different frameworks,” said the Managing Director.
“We’ve been working with them since 2009, so you could say that we specialise in live-station civil works for ESB.”
She added: “They’re a great client to have even though they’re a ‘paperwork-heavy’ client to work for because they’re so Health & Safety-orientated. That wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea but paperwork is my forte having come from an arts management background and also having helped people access arts grants through my previous work with the Arts Council and Clare County Council so I don’t mind paperwork. It can be a chore but you just have to do it.
“It’s a very, very high level of Health & Safety in which they operate from.”
Likewise, OTL Construction continues to operate from a very high level with regards to the services they provide clients.
Tara herself has helped to bring the company’s work, when it comes to paperwork, up to a very high standard over the last seven years or so.
“The framework that we tendered for back in 2014, before my dad passed away, was such a big project for us and it was very paperwork-heavy, as I recall,” she said.
Looking towards the coming months, OTL Construction’s MD is optimistic even in these times like no other.
Business is strong at the present time and she hopes things stay that way for the long-term.
“I would like to see it continue on and just keep doing what we’re doing. We get to travel around different live stations and sometimes new green-field sites and we get to work with great ESB staff and learn from them. Training is something I am really passionate about, having been an eternal student myself, so our lads receive a lot of training,” said Tara.
“We’re not too greedy and we’re not going out of our way to look for other clients either. We’d like to continue on with what we’re doing at the moment and deliver a good service to the clients we have. The one thing we don’t want to do is try to serve too many masters. That would need more resources although it’s not something we would rule out. We might look at that in a few years but for now we will continue to develop what we have and enjoy where we are.”
OTL Construction Ltd
Mill Road,
Glenties,
Co Donegal
Tel: 074 955 1132
Mobile: 087 290 8680
E-mail: [email protected]
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, August, Vol 7 No 8
