Caddick Construction Midlands One Year In; Building A New Regional Presence

Now 12 months into his leadership of Caddick Construction in the Midlands, and with exciting projects in the pipeline, Ray O’Sullivan, Regional Managing Director for Caddick Construction Midlands, shares his thoughts on the Midlands’ construction industry, its development hotspots and the momentum Caddick has generated since it launched in the region last summer.

Since joining Caddick Construction in the Midlands in July last year we have been making great strides in establishing our presence in the region. In September last year we opened our new office at Northspring in Birmingham. This was closely followed by our first project appointment in the Midlands region, Phase 2B of Urban Splash and Places for People’s Port Loop, a £14m residential development in Birmingham where the façade has been completed to enclose the building and fit-out has commenced. We have quite literally hit the ground running, something we owe to the fantastic talent within the team but also to Caddick’s established reputation for delivering high quality projects.

Building a strong team in the Midlands

When we launched Caddick Construction in the Midlands we had a small but strong team of six, which has since grown to 30+. We’re currently recruiting for various key roles to build our project teams, and are continually seeking talented individuals to join our skilled and diverse workforce with roles including project managers, quantity surveyors, estimators, engineers, and construction managers. Creating new construction jobs in the Midlands is itself a great testament to our relatively new position in the Midlands construction industry. Our ambition was to launch, secure projects that tapped into our expertise and specialisms and use our project pipeline to create job opportunities and boost the economy. In the short time since we opened our office, we have started on site at Port Loop alongside an £11m commercial office scheme in Stoke, a new £20m pharmaceutical development and a £11m logistics project in Wolverhampton. In tandem, we now have a £1b pipeline visibility over the next two years across the Midlands, spanning residential, industrial, manufacturing and pharmaceutical projects, and this pipeline gives us the opportunity to support our supply chain partners and create more Midlands construction jobs all while delivering great projects for our clients.

Serving a buoyant Midlands market

Construction in the Midlands is enjoying something of a heyday thanks to the ripple effects of HS2 and the resulting investments across Birmingham. The residential market in Birmingham is thriving, and the ongoing redevelopment of Digbeth has created a healthy supply of projects for contractors in the Midlands. Further afield, Wolverhampton’s proximity to Birmingham has also led to further opportunities, with workplace and residential accommodation requirements, so the knock on economic impact will be very positive for the West Midlands. We’re very excited to be a part of the region’s exciting transformation, but we’re also mindful that our project pipeline must be sustainable. We have had an incredibly strong start in the region, and we are expanding, but we are conscious that this growth must be measured and controlled.

Support our Midlands construction supply chain partners

Midlands contractors have a very important role to play in the market; we are here to deliver projects for our clients, but we also have to find a careful balance for the supply chain. The demands and challenges of the last few years have really tested suppliers and subcontractors; interest rates and inflationary pressures impacted a lot of construction work in the Midlands, but schemes that were once on hold are starting to pick back up again. This is opening up availability in the supply chain, which is really positive, but we must avoid overinflating the market or putting too much strain on the supply chain. Open conversation with our suppliers and subcontractors gives them visibility of our pipeline and allows them to plan their capacity. It is a really exciting time for Caddick Construction in the Midlands, and we’re looking forward to taking the region’s supply chain on this journey with us.