Glencar construction delivers strong growth in 2022

Today’s account filing shows Glencar’s growth in revenue from £160.4m in FY2021 to £417.8m in FY2022, reinforcing our position as one of the UK’s most successful, privately-owned UK construction contractors with a controlled and sustainable growth model.

With this excellent performance in revenue rising over 160%, and ongoing diversification into other sectors beyond our core market of industrial and logistics, we have also invested heavily in our business infrastructure to ensure we have solid foundations for further growth.

Despite challenges faced by the construction sector as a whole in recent years, our FY2022 accounts show robust fundamental performance indicators and a strong forward order book to ensure Glencar continues to cement its position within core markets and new areas of expansion.

Commenting on our performance and where our focus has been for future investment and expansion, Eddie McGillycuddy, Chief Executive Officer at Glencar said:

“After successfully taking our business to the next level with outstanding revenue in 2022, we have also reinvested significantly, ensuring a large portion of overhead for last year was redirected so we are future-ready. We have put down a marker to demonstrate that we are focused on further sector diversification in a sustainable manner, adding value for existing and new customers as well as being ready for the new challenges that lie ahead. This level of investment means, quite simply, we haven’t taken anything for granted.

Our spend has been focused on bringing in new sector leaders from across the spectrum, recruiting top talent for operational delivery, new digital infrastructure to deliver projects, expanding our regional presence in the UK and Ireland with top-tier new offices and more broadly, investing in our people with training and benefits so we retain those that have grown with us.”

Key projects and order book highlights

In the past 12 months, Glencar has been awarded and delivered a number of projects that underpin our ability to bring some of the largest and most complex projects in the industrial and logistics sector to market, in addition to expanding our capability in new areas. We have also secured our first two projects in Ireland, where we have invested in a new regional team and office.

Notable UK schemes include our flagship works at Nuneaton for Baytree Properties and Rhenus Warehousing. At just under 1m sq ft, this development is setting new standards within the sector in terms of sustainable construction and will become one of the most sustainable end-use warehouses in the UK.

We are also creating another first in Wembley for Segro and St George, to construct their first multi-storey industrial development in the London Borough of Brent, which will also be the first multi-storey logistics development of its kind to be developed in London and the UK.

Looking to the future, our teams have been highly successful in securing an order book in excess of £400m for FY2023 to date, with revenues set to rise to £500m.

As well as a large amount of work secured within industrial and logistics, we’ve also secured a high profile new £100m+ data centre scheme that takes us into this exciting new sector, along with other markets such as film studios and ports.

We continue to expand our presence within the pharmaceutical sector too, recently securing another high-profile project under NDA that builds upon our previous work for Catalent’s VMIC, which was delivered during the height of the 2020 pandemic. This is a key sector for us to develop and will become a core strand of our annual revenue from 2023 onwards.

Chris Gleave, Director and Co-Founder at Glencar said:

“Our investment in the past 12 months creates excellent business resilience, ensuring we have the ability to respond to the pressures of geo-political shifts and volatile external markets.

Our strong, enduring relationships with customers – 90%+ of which give us repeat-business – and supply chain partners anchor our stability and has helped us to continue our strong growth performance, as demonstrated in the FY2022 accounts and FY2023 order book.

At Glencar, our supply chain partners are equally critical to our business, with high levels of transparency and communication that breed trust and loyalty. Our approach since our inception in 2016 has been to really support our supply chain partners, developing personal relationships at all levels to allow them to thrive with tailored support and faster payments if they ever encounter challenges.”

Environmental, social, and governance

Our commitment is to be Net Zero Carbon for Scope 1 & 2 Emissions by 2030 and Net Zero Carbon for Scope 3 emissions by 2045.

At an enterprise level, we have achieved the Planet Mark Certification for the company, which acts as a strong baseline for our Net Zero commitments. In 2022, all Scope 1, 2 & 3 GHG emissions are measured across the business using this Code of Conduct.

2022 was another year of baseline measurements for emissions, owing to the staged transition of movement for the Head Office team from Beaconsfield Road, St Albans to Glencar House nearby, as well as office moves for the Birmingham and Manchester offices, plus the new facility in Ireland. A key outcome of this process for 2023 will be the implementation of our three-year carbon reduction plan, based on year-on-year reductions, between 2023-2025.

Amongst many initiatives to deliver on these commitments, key factors in achieving our Net Zero targets will be to implement the use of photovoltaic (PV) arrays to supplement diesel generated power on site, using hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) as a renewable diesel substitute, and encouraging employees to obtain energy efficient vehicles via the electric car scheme and to utilise electric plants and equipment on all sites where possible.

As well as developing our own carbon reduction plan, we support customers in delivering Net Zero Carbon in Construction & Operation and have delivered two of our first ever Net Zero Carbon (construction) projects for customers in 2022.

Social value

In the past 12 months, we delivered over £10m worth of social value to local communities in the UK. This shows that we are highly active in the places where we operate and seek to create social value and opportunities wherever we can. This includes delivering on social value targets for community partnerships and outreach, local employment, local training, and qualifications.

Irrespective of customer requirements, Glencar will always target a minimum of 10% local spend on all projects (through a combination of services, local labour, and supply chain), as part of our commitment to supporting the local communities that we operate within.

We have delivered millions of pounds of social value on our projects in 2022, as defined by the National TOMs Standards for calculation. Key highlights include:

• Coventry Logistics Park – £1,446,208
• Stewarts Plastics, Croydon – £1,056,268
• Segro V Park, Acton – £380,000 (to date)

Health and safety

Safety is paramount at Glencar, and our project planning process prioritises the provision of a safe working environment for our staff, subcontractors, and for the communities we work in.

Our ongoing performance continues to position us as a contractor that puts people’s safety and wellbeing at the top of the agenda. Glencar’s Accident Incident Rate (AIR) is 0.3, which is a substantial reduction on the Health and Safety Executive’s target of 3.5. Our All Injury Frequency Rate (AIFR) is also extremely low, currently scoring at 0.021.

During the last financial year, Glencar has not been issued with any Health and Safety enforcement notices and we have invested heavily in new systems such as Indexx and Dalux to take our data-led safety management systems to the next level as we move into 2023.

We’ve also introduced our new ‘Gold Standard’ Health and Safety sub-brand, which will be a significant new step to create an enhanced safety and wellbeing culture across our workforce and the wider supply chain.

Innovation

In the past 12 months we have invested heavily in new ideas and the use of leading-edge technology to find innovative solutions and better ways of working. This includes a fully developed design management procedure, which ensures we utilise the very latest BIM software wherever possible to provide the best service to our clients.

Our engineering department use the latest technology to foresee design clashes and to improve safety on site. Drones are used throughout projects for modelling, surveying, and monitoring progress. We use market leading document management software to improve efficiency and communication throughout the entire design process.