For a quarter of a century, Hickey Electrical Services has been synonymous with providing unrivalled commercial and industrial electrical contracting solutions to a who’s who of clients. Building Ireland touched base with proprietor Brian Hickey to get an update.
Experienced and highly-regarded contractor Brian Hickey has been working in the electrical trade for 46 years. Having previously spent a decade with P Lynch Ltd, where it all first started as a naive 16-year-old – where he cut his teeth working at Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre – and a further twelve years as contracts manager with H Shields Ltd., Brian opted to go out on his own and established Hickey Electrical Services in 1997.
It’s fair to say that he has never looked back during the intervening 25 years. Brian has completed a vast array of commercial and industrial installation projects, many of these for Tier One main contractors. With a well-trained crew on site, Hickey Electrical Services is as busy right now as ever it’s been!
“We’re very busy at the moment and it’s difficult to expand any further as good electricians are hard to come by, but everybody is in the same boat,” Brian notes.
Having celebrated the company’s landmark 25th anniversary in February of this year, the company founder concedes that he had never set out with a specific plan to reach such milestones: “I didn’t really think too far ahead when I was setting up the business. But I stayed at it, kept working away to the highest possible standards and we have gone from strength to strength. I think when you start out in business you need a number of things in your favour, you need a good contact list, some capital of course, and luck. But if you put in the hard work in the early stages you sort of, make your own luck.
Has contracting changed? Brian has seen massive changes in the construction industry since those early days in Dun Laoghaire, none more welcome than Health & Safety.
“My job on a Friday as a first-year apprentice was to go to St Michaels hospital and pay any of the staff in hospital. It sounds funny now looking back but they were the risks in construction at that time and were totally unacceptable. Another game changer has been BCAR which has raised building standards.
“The other big changes have been lighting in the last 10 years, and in particular lighting controls has changed drastically, with the latest Casambi or Bluetooth Mesh platforms looking very exciting.
“What satisfies me most in the business is the amount of repeat work we have picked up down through the years. We have been fortunate enough to work for a lot of major clients and have built up lasting relationships with them. We’re cautious of who we work for and will only take on projects for clients we know we can trust.”
Purcell and Collen Construction are just two of the well-known industry-leading contractors for whom Brian and his team have worked on a consistent basis down through the decades, although a vast range of projects large and small has been delivered within the greater Dublin region.
“At the moment, we’re doing quite a bit of work for a brilliant, innovative company called Connect Construct,” Brian reveals. “Robert Brennan is the Managing Director and Ivan Loza their Construction director. We’re working through them on a number of fit outs for large blue-chip clients such as Hines, GLG, Ergo, Bayer, Hibernia Rait. What I really like about them is they think like us, and strive to deliver good quality projects on time and within budget. Their energy is infectious.”
Brian is also a great believer in giving back to the industry and has served as President of the Association of Electrical Contractors of Ireland (AECI) from 2012 -2014. Presently Brian represents the AECI on TC2 a committee that is the Guardians of IS10101, the National Rules for Electrical Installation, for the NSAI.
Installations at nursing homes represent another area in which Hickey Electrical Services has been particularly active in recent years. “We worked on the The Four Ferns Nursing Home in Foxrock in 2019, which is akin to a five-star hotel and was the most expensive nursing home in Ireland at that time for the Willis Group’s it is their flagship nursing home. We also completed in 2021 a second extension to their nursing home in Blackrock having finished the first extension in 2015 and the original building in 2013 all with Collen Construction.
“This year we completed their latest nursing home in Balbriggan – a 100-bed home with panoramic views of the beach and harbour. We are also about to embark on another new nursing home project in Stepaside, again delivering a full electrical fit out, all of which are for the same client. You get a great feeling when a client puts so much trust in your company.”
While the vast majority of the workforce on site are directly-employed, in-house staff, Brian does occasionally avail of the services of tried-and-trusted external subcontractors to make sure every project is fulfilled on time and to the highest standards of professionalism and safety.
He’s very much a hands-on director and likes to be visit sites as much as possible, however he is trying to step back a little and let his very experienced Contracts team take control.
“You have got to trust your top staff unconditionally otherwise it just won’t work. And these guys are the best. And I have been very lucky to have Fergus O’Carroll as my sidekick since the start, and I value his council so much. The other weight off my shoulders is the accounts department which has been run by Eileen Hickey since the start, being an ex-banker, her expertise was invaluable at start up, and down the years.
“We’re flat out at present and we were very lucky during the pandemic to be engaged on two primary care centres – one in Bray and one in Clondalkin – which were deemed to be essential HSE projects.”
Since the genesis of the company 25 years ago, Brian has invariably provided value-added services to all clients on all projects.
“We always strive towards excellence in the installations we provide. The most important ingredient in achieving that is good staff and attention to detail,” states the personable Dublin contractor. “There was so much bad work out there, as you can see from the €3b bill to fix up all the shoddy work done during the Celtic Tiger, but we genuinely pride ourselves on excellence in our work, repeat business and value too.
“For the level of service we provide, we were never going to be the cheapest electrical contractor out there, but we are by no means the most expensive either. I believe you get what you pay for. As the old adage says, if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is. If you want quality, then you have to pay for it but at the same time you will always get value in your quality.
“Because we strive to do the best work possible, we have built up a strong rapport with our clients over the years and I would consider many of them to be friends at this stage. We are very proud to have worked for the biggest and the best and will continue to provide all of our clients with the highest level of service going forward.”
Hickey Electrical Services,
Tel: 086 8205252
Email: [email protected]
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, November 2022, Vol 8 No 11
