Custy Construction Ltd is a progressive building general contracting company which provides its clients with a high-quality construction service. Building Ireland caught up with Site Manager John Meabe to learn all about this thriving Co Clare venture which featured on RTE’s popular DIY SOS: Big Build Ireland programme this past April.
Established since 2005, business has seldom been better for Custy Construction Ltd in Ennis, Co Clare than it has been so far this year.
The company is immersed in numerous projects all over the Munster region and, over the past 18 years, it has earned a track record for completing high quality projects on time and within budget for a variety of clients, including large multi-national corporations, private companies and several local authorities.
Right now, Custy Construction Ltd operates with 40 direct staff from its base in Unit 4 Block G, Riverside Business Park, Quinn Road, Ennis, Co Clare, and also uses another 40 sub-contractors for its work.
Site Manager John Meabe has been part of the team in Ennis since 2016 and filled Building Ireland in on the ins and outs of the company, along with its past and present projects.
“I would’ve been a self-employed carpenter by trade and went back and got reskilled during the downturn,” he outlined. “I came back then and was working for myself and then started working with Custy Construction in 2016.
“At the moment business is very good here. During Covid, we worked right through it because we had HSE work on.
“Since 2020, we were very busy with that and a lot of projects got moved on because of Covid. We’re just trying to get back on top of them and I’d have to say that business is very busy at the moment.”
Since ‘Day One’, the company’s ethos has been about providing clients with a high-quality construction service by continually improving its quality processes, providing outstanding project management capabilities and also ensuring that sufficient financial and managerial resources are assigned to each project to make sure of successful project completions.
At Custy Construction Ltd, the integrity of completed projects forms the foundation of its established reputation as a premium building service provider.
All of that considered, it’s little wonder why its project books are full up right now.
“At the moment, I’m on a residential development here in Ennis,” said John. “It’s 21 newly built homes as part of a Two Phase with a Third Phase coming in at the end of June for another 13 further houses.
“We finished an extension to a school in Loughrea and I’m after doing a private development for a developer which was four houses.”
He added: “It’s ‘all go’ at the moment and, in between that, we also had HSE work. We always have HSE work on and we’ve done an extension to St Joseph’s here in Ennis and an extension to a hospital out in Raheen as well. So, that was all part of it. They were all one-off internal jobs that would’ve arisen during the course of the year, so it’s busy enough at the minute.”
This past April saw a project close to the heart of Custy Construction Ltd air on national television.
DIY SOS: The Big Build Ireland’s show featured the work the company carried out on the Mulvey-Sydney home in Tobarteascáin, Ennis, Co. Clare in August of last year.
Thirteen-year-old Isabella Mulvey-Sydney was born with a rare congenital disorder called Lumbar Sacral Agenesis. It resulted in both of the girl’s legs being amputated when she was seven years old.
When Custy Construction Ltd were contacted by the show’s organisers to make alterations to the Mulvey-Sydney’s home for Isabella, the team were only delighted to help.
“Dermot Custy himself would’ve been approached to see if he’d be interested to do it and, when he said ‘yes’, he asked me if I’d be interested in doing it,” John explained.
“Of course, I was and even if I wasn’t involved with Dermot doing it, and it was going on in Ennis, I would’ve liked to have been some bit of a help in it. It was great to be part of the organisation of the whole lot of it, so that’s how that came about.”
He continued: “It was originally supposed to happen in June, but then we did the Ukrainian Special Build. So, we would’ve visited the one in Cork, which was Adam’s Build in Cork, before we did the Mitchelstown one. We visited that in April 2022 and then it was pushed out from June until the end of August, so, in a way, we were doing it since April.”
As for the ins and outs of what the project itself actually entailed, John was able to fill us in on the details.
“Isabella’s biggest problem was access in and out of the house and up and down from first floor to ground floor,” he said.
“So, we raised the front paving of the driveway so she’d have able access into the house and then we refitted all the doors in the house with lower handles so that she’d have easy access. All the electrics were redone to have a lower measurement for her to access herself. She’s a very independent girl that wants to be independent as she gets older.
“We put a lift in from the ground floor to the first floor, so she had access to that. External doors in the back were made to a level access with paving outside, and then we put in a pavilion outside to somewhere that she could have her own little space and time away but also elevate to heights that she wouldn’t have been able to go to before.”
Altogether, the project took nine days to complete, with ‘Day Nine’ being its handover date by which time works had been completed.
Custy Construction’s Site Manager described the entire project as “a brilliant experience to be involved in”.
“What DIY SOS do brilliantly in a sense is that they bring communities together and everyone in Ennis knew the Mulvey-Sidneys either personally or someone belonging to them did,” he said.
“A massive community effort went into it and it was humbling, to be honest with you, and to be looking after it was a lot of pressure. There was a lot of work that went on behind the scenes before the actual programme started recording – everything had to be preorganised and delivery schedules and everything. It was fairly intense in the lead up to it, whereas the actual build itself I found fairly okay, even though it was long hours.
“Like I say, it was something we were fairly used to. We did a lot of Covid work and Covid work was emergency work, so we were used to getting things done in short timeframes.
“It was great and the volunteers made it much easier.”
He concluded: “The reaction since the show came out on Easter Sunday has been great. People were coming up to us and congratulating us for the work and that was fantastic.”
Wonderful stuff to hear.
Custy Construction Ltd is CIRI (Construction Industry Register Ireland) registered, CIF (Construction Industry Federation) registered, work in full compliance with the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act: 2005 and we are NSAI (National Standards Authority Ireland) accredited to ISO 9001:2018 and ISO 45001:2018 standard.
Custy Construction Ltd
Unit 4, Block G,
Riverside Business Park,
Quinn Road,
Ennis,
Co Clare
Tel: 065 6845494
Email: [email protected]
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, October 2023, Vol 9 No 10
