JJ Rhatigan & Company’s ongoing commitment to social responsibility and community engagement was to the fore on a remarkable home transformation delivered for Kyle Ferguson and his family for a moving episode of RTÉ’s acclaimed television series ‘DIY SOS: The Big Build Ireland’ – a project that was particularly close to contracts manager Ciarán Crosby’s heart.
Earlier this year, one hundred volunteers per day from the construction industry and neighbourhood rallied together to complete a truly remarkable and life-changing home transformation for the Ferguson family in Wicklow town.
Seventeen-year-old Kyle, who has cerebral palsy, had been confined to a small area of the family home as he couldn’t use his wheelchair inside or access the first floor. Fronted by Tier One contractor JJ Rhatigan, a challenging transformation was successfully delivered in just nine days, with the highlights aired to the nation in the final episode of the most recent series of ‘DIY SOS: The Big Build Ireland’.
The project was a stunning success and, in these times of hardship for the industry and people in general, it struck a chord with the public as an innately human, compassionate and caring side of people was put on display. Cavan native Ciarán Crosby, who returned home to Ireland from London in 2024 to join the Rhatigan team, was humbled by the experience:
“To be fair, it was a great success. It was great to be able to go back into the community like that and to help out a family that needed help. You can’t put a value on something like that. For everybody who was involved, it meant the world to us. After the dust settled on what was a unique and fairly chaotic build at times, it was incredibly satisfying from both a personal point of view and also from a company perspective.”
JJ Rhatigan & Company’s first-ever DIY SOS build aired on RTE One on Sunday evening, October 26th and the positive feedback afterwards was incredible. The Wicklow DIY SOS build stands as one of JJ Rhatigan’s most heartfelt and impactful CSR initiatives to date – helping transform the home of an inspirational, brave teenager who lives with daily challenges that most of us cannot imagine.
It reflects their belief that construction, at its best, is about building communities as much as buildings.
Kyle’s parents wanted him to live comfortably and be able to navigate the world as an independent young man, but everyday obstacles made this a challenge, even in his own home. Thanks to the incredible effort of Rhatigan’s team, suppliers and volunteers, Kyle now has a fully accessible home that gives him independence and dignity.
This was more than a build: it was about people coming together, showing kindness and making a real difference.
“Our involvement in the DIY SOS: The Big Build project in Wicklow represents the very heart of who we are as a company,” explained Sarah O’Donohue, Chief People Officer at JJ Rhatigan. “At JJ Rhatigan, we believe that our responsibility extends far beyond the construction site. This initiative allowed our people to use their skills to make a real and lasting difference in the community, and we are incredibly proud of the compassion, teamwork, and commitment shown by everyone involved.”
What the heart-warming TV programme didn’t show is the inordinate amount of work that took place long before the cameras started to roll: “We held an initial kick-off meeting with the production company and it was pretty much all hands on deck straight away as there was a lot of pre-planning and pre-works to be done,” says Ciarán.
“We had to plan for enabling works and carry out pre-works for a couple of weeks and make sure the supply chain was there to facilitate the works once we got moving. There was a lot of engagement and planning to try to make sure everything would go smoothly.”
What was Ciarán’s role onsite? “Titles aren’t important when it comes to projects like this. I was contracts manager but we had leaders everywhere. From JJ Rhatigan, we had a number of key people involved in the project, led by Sean Cummins and Enda O Connor, site manager Paul Hughes , site foreperson Janine Keown, H&S officer Lucy Crowley and site engineer Ciaran Sheridan The company really embraced this and invested a lot of resources to make sure that Kyle and his family ended up with a finished project that exceeded what they would have expected or hoped for.
“Everyone who contributed was a volunteer. In the current economic climate, it’s not easy to volunteer your services 100 per cent, but once everyone got started, there was no stopping them. It was an inspirational environment to be in. I was onsite myself for three weeks during the pre-works and then right through the project to handover and, while there was a lot of hard work and long hours, it was incredibly rewarding.
“To be able to give something like this back into the community is very special. Nobody is immune to hardship in life and everybody has issues that have affected them and they’ve had to somehow deal with. A project like this is a good lesson to people of all the things we take for granted.
“It’s nice to help people and this project showed that – even though JJ Rhatigan & Company is obviously a major contractor – it’s not all about building big sites, generating turnover and making money. Something like this can bring a lot more value because there’s huge goodwill there and it all just makes you more appreciative and proud of what you do.”
Because of the time constraints of getting the work finished inside just nine days, traditional scheduling and sequencing of trades goes out the window – sometimes almost literally: “You have to improvise and you are going to see things that you don’t tend to ever see on a building site, like one crew putting down floors with another stepping over them armed with plasterboards. Everybody is trying to stay out of each other’s way and one night we had to stay on until midnight because the floors had to have latex laid, an activity in the same area as plastering works being undertaken that day that coincidentally were delayed with some design challenges. We were always thinking on our feet and sometimes outside the box but there was a very good nature to it and that was great to see.
“Look, obviously, there was an overall plan to things and a sequence we intended to follow but once you got started you wanted to do the best you could for Kyle, to give him an even better finish, so if you end up taking out an extra ceiling that wasn’t initially planned, then you just have to roll with the punches. Once we were there, we decided to do it right so that Kyle and his family could get full use out of it.
“The house had been built in the early 2000s and wasn’t adequate for the family’s needs, with no accessibility. It didn’t lend itself to being free-flowing for Kyle and movement into and around the house was a real struggle for him. This was a wonderful opportunity to fix that once and for all and that was our only focus once we all got started.”
Did Ciarán enjoy being on TV? “No, there were times you didn’t want to see the cameras going because you were under the cosh but it was a great opportunity personally – not to be on the telly but to get to do something like this. It was such a worthwhile cause and such a wonderful experience.
“If there was ever something like this again, I’d most certainly go down and do some volunteering myself again because it was a very unique project where everybody was pulling in the one direction for all the right reasons and it was a truly great feeling to be part of that.
“I can’t emphasise enough how happy I am personally and how honoured JJ Rhatigan & Company is as a company to have been involved in this special project. Despite all the difficulties our industry is experiencing, we wanted to do this for the Ferguson family. People forget that there has always been a strong social / community aspect to what we do and it was great to get an opportunity to highlight that.
“To see so many people working so hard, and none of them there for monetary gain, was uplifting in the extreme. I loved getting that reaffirmation of the power of human nature. All the volunteers parked their jobs and their businesses and just knuckled down for all the right reasons. We were delighted with the end result. Nobody could have done any more and I sincerely hope Kyle can flourish now in his new surroundings.”
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, February 2026, Vol 12 No 2
