With over six decades of experience, Wm. O’Brien Crane Hire has provided its proven expertise to a Who’s Who of main contractors on prestigious construction projects all across the island of Ireland, the UK and beyond. As the renowned family business continues to go from strength to strength, we caught up with Group chief executive officer Kevin Hayes on site at Pairc Ui Chaoimh to get an update.
By providing clients with exceptional, market-leading solutions, Wm. O’Brien Crane Hire has become the go-to company for major construction projects in Ireland, offering a comprehensive fleet of perfectly-maintained and expertly-operated lattice boom and telescopic cranes to clients from the Glenties to Dungarvan, Galway to Grenoble and Greenwich to Glasgow.
William O’Brien Jnr., who purchased the business from his family in 2007, is following in the footsteps of his father in offering solutions of the very highest standard and that’s why it was no surprise when John Sisk & Sons were looking for a crane hire company to help out with the €70m redevelopment of Pairc Ui Chaoimh, home of Cork GAA, they turned to the local company with an international reputation.
Wm. O’Brien Crane Hire is one of four companies making up the Wm. O’Brien Group, the others being Wm. O’Brien Energy Services, Wm. O’Brien Self Storage and Wm. O’Brien Training School. The Group was established by William Snr. over 60 years ago and crane hire quickly became the core activity. He began his working career in the construction industry, purchasing his first truck and JCB for laying gravel on roadsides. Following this successful endeavour, it became possible for William to purchase his first crane – an enterprise he would transform into one of the longest-established and best-known companies in the business.
At various times, the entrepreneurial William Snr. successfully entered the waste disposal, plastics and concrete pumping industries, as well as importing road rollers during the 1980s. Adopting innovative ahead of their time advertising slogans such as ‘Don’t risk it, let O’Brien shift it’ and ‘Where O’Brien goes, prosperity follows’ gaining popularity nationwide and backing up a dependable, professional, efficient and prompt service, the O’Brien name soon became synonymous with unrivalled crane hire.
This hasn’t changed!
Nominated by Sisk as Ireland’s premier crane hire company, Wm. O’Brien Crane Hire has worked extensively for many of the main contractors in the country and many state bodies on a wide range of construction, infrastructural and energy projects. Indeed, the challenging energy sector has become one of their recognised specialist areas.
Looking to the future, there will be no let-up in terms of the high levels of service and care provided to clients: “We are very focused on delivering a market-leading service to satisfy our customers’ needs,” confirms Kevin Hayes, CEO of the Wm. O’Brien Group. “As our customers grow and prosper, we aim to grow in tandem with them through the enhanced delivery of class-leading safe solutions.”
Headquartered in Cork, Wm. O’Brien Crane Hire also has offices and service depots in Tipperary, Glasgow, Dublin and Madrid. Gainful employment is generated for a team of around 100 people in Ireland, with upwards of 30 class leading cranes featured in the extremely versatile fleet, ranging from 25 tonnes up to 1,200 tonnes. Indeed, Wm. O’Brien owns and operates the most significant fleet of large cranes here in the Republic of Ireland.
Since the company’s foundation in the early 1950s, it has amassed a huge amount of experience and acclaim within the industry. As an integral part of the local community, it has continually invested in its staff and has always been acknowledged for the prosperity it has brought to the local economy during good and not-so-good times.
In 2005, William Jnr. opened up the storage facility in Cork which offers storage from 25 to 150 sq ft. Eleven years later, Wm. O’Brien Self Storage is still going strong with further plans to expand the existing storage facility in Cork.
Wm. O’ Brien Energy Services, meanwhile, was founded in the noughties as the Group started to focus on the renewable energy industry. They started by supplying specialist cranes to wind farm sites, which led to providing electrical and windfarm installation technicians, before they expanded into specialist engineering works including blade repair on wind turbines.
Safety and quality have always been core values of the Wm. O’Brien Group and they are renowned for their innovative approach to business, constantly investing in new technologies and products so as to provide customers with the highest quality service.
“The business is in a very strong position having survived and prospered for over 60 years, through a lot of challenging times, so we will be continuing with that prudent approach to the business going forward,” the CEO adds. “We are experiencing growth at the moment, as the economy and market condition improves, with 30% growth figures expected for the current calendar year. In keeping with those projections, we anticipate similar year-on-year growth over the next five years.
“We service all sectors of the community. As well as working for all the blue-chip clients, we also have a large base of smaller customers with whom we’ve built very strong relationships with over the past 30 years – some of our existing clients’ fathers would have hired cranes from William O’Brien Snr – and we’re always attracting new customers as well as the market dynamic changes.
“We have a significant footprint in the multi-national, IT and pharmaceutical sectors and we’re also very busy in the energy sector – both traditional and renewable. We’re recognised in the industry as market leaders in terms of Health & Safety, quality and delivering class-leading solutions for complex situations on site. It has taken a lot of dedication and hard work to earn such an outstanding reputation and we intend to enhance it even further as the company continues to lead the way in its chosen field.”
Wm. O’Brien Crane Hire,
Bishopstown,
County Cork.
Tel: 021 4543881
Fax: 021 4543695
Email:
[email protected]
Web:
www.cranehireireland.com
Taken from Building Ireland Magazine, September 2016, Vol 2 No 5
