With origins that date back more than 75 years, Clancy Construction is a firm which uses its many years of experience and innovative approach to deliver a service that truly reflects their clients’ particular needs. Building Ireland spoke with Cork-based Associate Director Des Riordan to hear more about the state of business for the company and the project that sees it nominated in the Commercial – €10-60million category at the upcoming Irish Construction Excellence Awards.
In August 2022, Clancy Construction completed works on a SHD student accommodation project at Bandon Road in Cork.
The Ashlin Houseproject, which took just over two years to carry out, had a final value of €52.5m and has since been nominated in the Commercial – €10-60million category at this year’s Irish Construction Excellence (ICE) Awards.
Headquartered in Drangan, Thurles, Co Tipperary, Clancy also has offices in Dublin and Cork, with the latter employing some 70 full-time staff from that strategic location.
Associate Director Des Riordan is one of them and, having been part of the team for the past three years, he filled Building Ireland in on the detail of the Bandon Road project and the overall state of business at the moment for Clancy.
“Business has been good, thankfully. Cork was very busy when we were in the middle of Ashlin House and we had five tower cranes covering our Cork sites” he outlined. “Now we have just taken one down from the Mercy (Hospital) and have erected one in Blackrock, but that’s the extent of our tower cranes in Cork as all our other projects are low rise projects.
“While the order book for 2023 was very encouraging during the construction of Ashlin House, the war in Ukraine and the ensuing hyper-inflation severely dented the confidence in the market. While we still have a number of projects underway we are actively looking for a project to replace Bandon Road. That said there is a notable increase in enquiries lately, and would be optimistic that one or two will materialise into live projects to inject much needed confidence into the market.”
Right now, there are on-going projects for the company in Boherboy Road, which is a social and affordable housing scheme, and a housing project in Tower, Blarney, Co Cork.
In Mercy University Hospital, Clancy recently handed over a 30-bed ward extension and are currently delivering the final phase which accommodates two new state of the art theatres. The entire project has been an amazing feat of engineering.
Also on-going in Cork is a new scheme which just recently commenced that will see the construction of 30 much needed social units in Blackrock.
Indeed, business is good but, at Clancy, they’re always looking for the next flagship project after having delivered one of the most impressive projects in the Rebel County towards end of last summer and the only one of similar size which came in on time and budget.
Ashlin House was an exciting project for the firm, as Des Riordan outlined the ins and outs of it to us.
“We broke ground on the project on May 18, 2020. We started by demolishing the existing joinery factory in addition to combining an adjacent greenfield site which made up the balance of the site” said the Associate Director.
“The project consisted of a 554 bed Student Accommodation project serviced by 77 apartments and set in the heart of picturesque and historic Cork City. It infused cutting edge construction technology and innovation with subtle, yet invigorating, design to ignite the locality and organically fuse conventional and traditional seamlessly together.
“We completed in August 2022 which was a tremendous feat as we lost 19 weeks during the lockdowns yet still managed to finish ahead of schedule and on budget.
“I would categorically say the reason we came in on time and on budget was due to our expertise, application and approach towards modern methods of construction, innovation, digitisation and lean practices.”
However, Des feels that the Client team and the development’s operator Nido Student Accommodation Ireland deserve their share of the credit for not holding up any part of the process.
“There was constant communication and collaboration where key decisions were made effectively with the project needs at the forefront, which was great,” he stated.
The Irish Construction Excellence Awards have also recognised the calibre of the project by including it in its Commercial Project of the Year €10-60million category.
The award ceremony itself is set to take place at the Convention Centre in Dublin on April 27th and, as Des himself sees it, to be nominated in the first place is “an honour” for the company.
“None of us enter into these projects for the sole purpose of being nominated, you just want to perform to the bast of your ability in delivering a safe, successful project for all concerned.
“It is a privilege and an honour to be recognised and nominated in such a highly fought category.”
Down through the years, the company has earned multiple award successes and it looks set to add more to the collection in 2023.
So, what is it about Clancy that sets it apart from its fellow competitors?
“Our company culture is ‘Built on Partnership’, collaboration and living our core values,” said Des. “It’s a simplistic way of putting it, I suppose, but we do what we say we will do. We are a very lean, forward thinking company who re-invest considerably in training and development. We employ and retain like-minded people who are passionate about what they do.
“We are pioneers in Modern Methods of Construction and in our ability to implement the necessary supports to provide a robust offering and delivery mechanism throughout the project lifecycle. We are big enough to lead, lean enough to listen and experienced enough to challenge the status quo in search of a better way. This promotes the ability to succeed from the outset and also creates an enjoyable journey throughout the process.”
Looking towards the months ahead, Des says that the hope for Clancy will be “to get in front of more decision makers” not only in Cork but throughout Munster and Leinster.
“Anyone that we do speak to and that we’re able to showcase not only Bandon Road, but the housing developments and the HSE work, are delighted with our approach, core values and innovative delivery processes,” he said.
“What we have is something very special, which our current clientele cherish, so it is about transmitting this to future clients and building those relationships. Construction doesn’t have a great name and historically contractors have been perceived, rightly or wrongly, for being somewhat disingenuous.
“From my own experience, I’ve spent 20 years working internationally for different contractors and developers and I can see where the perceptions lay in certain arenas. That said, I do think, thankfully, the industry is turning a corner and starting to get more lean and more agile and, in that way, more dependable, but it will take a while for this tangible shift of trust to materialise significantly.”
The Associate Director concluded: “It is frustrating to be tarred with the one brush, but it is human nature, and it’s just to be able to change that narrative for Clancy as a leader in the industry, because we’ll all be able to benefit. We are creating a substantial competitive advantage in what we deliver, the means by which we deliver it and the performance results achieved throughout the lifecycle to completion. That said, we relish the opportunity to continuously improve so that we strive to stay ahead of the competition and provide superior results to our client base for unconditional benefit.”
Clancy Construction
Ballylusky,
Drangan,
Thurles,
Co Tipperary
Tel: 052 91 52166
Email: [email protected]
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, July 2023, Vol 9 No 7
