Being at the heart of change in Irish Construction
As construction giant Sisk moves to a new home in Citywest, CEO Paul Brown speaks with Robbie Cousins about the contractor’s many achievements in 2023 and the rapid changes happening in Irish construction, several of which Sisk has been striving towards.
After taking up the role of CEO at John Sisk & Son in 2022, Paul Brown took time to better understand the business he had been a part of for the previous nine years. “I had spent eight years leading Sisk’s UK division and managed the civil engineering sector in Ireland for a few years,” Paul Brown explains. “I thought I knew the business well, but reflecting on it now, I realise it was even stronger than I initially believed. In those first few months, I spent a significant amount of time familiarising myself with the company’s operations in Ireland and Europe, and it’s been a positive first couple of years.”
However, there were also challenges. “We dedicated a lot of time to closing down some legacy projects in various countries,” he explains. “Some in the UK dated back decades.
“I have been really pleased with how the business has developed. In 2022, we made some changes in our organisational set-up to meet the needs of a rapidly changing marketplace, creating key new divisions. For instance, we extracted our data centre and life sciences business from the normal domestic Irish business capability and created a new division. That has underpinned much of our success in the past 18 months.”
Sisk Achievements
Today, Sisk employs 2,500 people across all of its operations. In 2023, it had a record-breaking turnover of nearly €2.5bn. By comparison, its pre-Covid turnover in 2019 was just under €1.4bn.
Significant projects completed include Coopers Cross, Analog Devices, and Meta’s Lulea Data Centre in Sweden – Sisk’s biggest project delivered to date.
“We doubled our life sciences and data centre volume from around €400m to €800m in the period. And the domestic Irish division also maintained its business and has grown in stature by winning high-quality public and private sector work.”
In Dublin city centre, off Grafton Street, Project Kells is a world-class commercial building that faced some complex interfaces, including the Luas cross city tramline and a major pedestrian footfall in the main artery of Dublin city centre.
In Cork, the high-profile Dunkettle Interchange was a complex piece of engineering. It was also one that Paul Brown took a close interest in.
“I’m a civil engineer. Before becoming CEO, I took over the role of COO of the civil engineering division in Ireland in 2019, at a time when we were pricing Dunkettle. I was immediately attracted to the project because of the complexity of the challenge, and I was very close to the project from tender to delivery.
“I am delighted to say that we delivered a world-class facility on time and on budget as a result of the collaborative approach taken by the customer TII, Sisk and all of the consultants. This was a phenomenal achievement. Dunkettle Interchange is an extremely complex piece of infrastructure.”
In the Netherlands, the CAR-T Cell Therapy Production Centre project in Leiden is a new manufacturing facility for Bristol Myers Squibb. It is the first CAR-T cell therapy production centre in Europe and fifth in the world. It houses the latest technology and production equipment dedicated to personalised treatments for European cancer patients. Paul Brown comments: “Given the importance of treatment to the end user, Sisk is extremely proud to have completed this project.”
In the UK, the Santander Unity Place project in Milton Keynes was a complex project that has cemented Sisk’s position as an office provider in London.
Upcoming Sisk projects
Sisk, in conjunction with Dublin City Council and development partner Bartra, has turned the first sod on the O’Devaney Gardens redevelopment, which will deliver 1,044 new homes in the heart of Dublin city. When complete, 50% of the A-rated homes will be delivered to Dublin City Council for social and affordable housing. Phase 1 of the development will see the delivery of 379 A-rated social, affordable, and cost-rental homes, a park, crèche, community space and retail units.
Sisk is also building seven much-needed community nursing units (CNUs) throughout Ireland. The €250m 104-week programme will deliver 530 badly needed nursing-home beds to the HSE by the end of 2024 at the following locations: Ardee, Athlone, Clonmel, Thomastown, Killarney, Midleton, St Finbarr’s (Cork).
To maximise the use of modern methods of construction (MMC) techniques, the building superstructures are being manufactured off site using pre-cast concrete. When complete, all buildings will be an A2 Building Energy Rating (BER) minimum.
In the UK, Sisk was recently appointed by Premier League champions Manchester City Football Club as the construction contractor for its €350m development of the club’s best-in-class fan experience and year-round entertainment and leisure destination at the Etihad Stadium. The development will include several connected all-weather facilities, fully integrated into the stadium, centred around an expanded North Stand with one larger, single upper tier above the existing lower tier, increasing capacity to over 60,000.
Sisk outlook
Paul Brown says he is very pleased with Sisk’s revenue of about €2.5bn in 2023. His goal is to maintain the level of quality projects, but also improve the blend of projects and where the contractor operates.
“Our revenues are sitting at around €2.5bn. We don’t, as such, have a strategy to grow the top line of the business from here. Our goal is to improve the blend of what we do and where we do it.
“Put simply, for instance, we want to grow our data centre and life sciences capability with quality projects and clients.
“Our services division, including Sensori FM and VisionBuilt, has a turnover of around €200m. We want its revenue to increase by €300m over the next three years. But again, the blend of work we pursue is critical to our view of success.
“Another division, Strategic Projects, is set to grow as retrofit and decarbonisation market opportunities arise over the coming years.”
Market conditions
While 2023 and 2024 to date have been hugely successful for Sisk, there are still several challenges that the CEO and senior management team of Ireland’s most successful construction firm have to deal with, and price volatility and supply security are upmost in the mind of Paul Brown.
He comments: “The majority of the price volatility and availability issues that we saw during the 2021-2023 period have now abated. But the period did result in elevated price levels for many construction commodities that are unlikely to ever return to pre-Covid-era levels.
“We will remain vigilant around materials markets pricing and availability. If we consider the events of the past few years, supply chain disruption seemed to begin with Brexit, then we had the systemic upheaval of the Covid-19 era, followed by the war in Ukraine and the subsequent European energy crisis.
“Each of these events has had a significant impact on our materials supply chains, and it is reasonable to expect that we will see further supply chain disruptions in some form or another in the coming years.”
ESG criteria
In 2023, Sisk was one of 14 Irish companies to achieve an A- score in its Carbon Disclosure Report. CDP, a global non-profit, runs the world’s environmental disclosure system, awarding A or A-grades to only 1.5% of the 23,000 companies reporting in 2023.
Paul Brown comments: “Our 2030 Sustainability Roadmap outlines ambitious targets aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals. We produce a yearly sustainability report, continually strengthening our sustainability ethos and actions to build a more resilient business.”
Sisk adheres to ISO20400, the international standard for sustainable procurement, exceeding baseline requirements by over 25%. This standard guides organisations to achieve sustainable outcomes through their supply chains. Brown adds: “For Sisk, this is crucial for anyone involved in procurement decisions and supplier interactions.”
In October 2023, in partnership with Green Restoration Ireland (GRI), Sisk prepared a site in Co Offaly for the sowing season, aiding sustainable peatland agriculture. This project, one of Ireland’s first wetland farms, raised the water table on three hectares of former peat pasture, avoiding 30-40 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Sisk has submitted greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). The SBTi’s Target Validation team classified Sisk’s Scope 1 and 2 target ambition as aligning with a 1.5°C trajectory.
Paul Brown is delighted that Sisk was one of the 15 founding members of the Irish Supply Chain Sustainability School, having been a member of the UK School for the past seven years. The school provides free industry-supported training, knowledge sharing and support for best practices in sustainability within the Irish built environment.
Membership to the school is free, offering access to hundreds of CPD-accredited online sustainability training sessions and e-learning resources.
Health & Safety at Sisk
In 2017, Sisk engaged with DEKRA, the world’s largest independent nonlisted expert organisation in the testing, inspection and certification sector, to assess the entire business. They provide a wide range of services focused on ensuring safety, minimising risk, and maximising performance. Sisk is at Level 3 in DEKRA’s safety barometer. To put that result into perspective, NASA and submarines would be at Level 5, and Sisk is now aiming for Level 4.
Paul Brown notes: “Over the past three years, Sisk has placed a huge emphasis on H&S with a relentless focus, which has borne fruit. A lot of this was due to better communication, and as a result, accident frequency rates (AFR) statistics have improved significantly. In 2023, we worked 26.02 million hours with an AFR rate of 1:00.”
Mental wellbeing
Mental wellbeing is a massive issue across the construction sector. As CEO, Paul Brown is committed to maintaining and developing a supportive workplace where employees can find the support they need if they are in difficulty.
He explains: “At Sisk, we recognise the importance of talking about mental health and normalising mental health conversations. To help start the conversation, we devised ‘Mental Health Matters’, our 45-minute non-clinical mental health awareness training, available for all Sisk sites and offices to book.
“These sessions are run by our Sisk Mental Health Leads and offer participants insights into a basic understanding of mental health.
“In addition to this, Sisk is also delivering ‘safeTALK’; an internationally recognised and evidence-based half-day suicide alertness training programme with over 100 staff trained in safeTALK so far.”
He continues: “This training is available to anyone at Sisk looking to contribute towards building a suicide safer community. No previous experience or formal preparation is needed before undertaking this training. Participants will gain an understanding of the importance of suicide alertness and learn clear and practical steps on what to do when supporting someone who is at risk of suicide.
“We have also achieved re-accreditation for our commitment to employee health and wellbeing by being awarded ‘The KeepWell Mark’ from Ibec.”
The Ibec KeepWell Mark is a national accreditation that recognises organisations that put the health and wellbeing of employees at the forefront of company policy. It comprises a set of eight health and wellbeing pillars, ranging from mental health to physical activity.
Diversity & Inclusion
Sisk’s 2023 graduate cohort was its largest and most diverse intake to date (48 graduates, 19% international hires and 25% female). Technology and the race to net zero have changed the dynamic of the construction industry, and Paul Brown comments that Sisk’s vision is to be at the heart of change.
He says: “We are trying to make careers in construction as attractive as possible. Collectively, the industry doesn’t attract enough females and people from diverse backgrounds. We are trying to unlock those talent pools and have invested much in our equality, diversity and inclusion programme.”
Sisk hosted an Equality, Diversity & Inclusion stakeholder event in London in September 2023 for its UK clients and supply chain partners.
“We had a guest panel featuring industry leaders in the ED & I space. This marked somewhat of a milestone on our journey, being able to authentically share and listen to people’s lived experiences from a variety of diverse backgrounds. This was a moment, a sense of realisation that while we have made significant progress in recent years, we have much more to do, with a firm commitment to continue pushing the boundaries.”
Building on this progress, Paul Brown adds that Sisk has developed an Inclusion and Belonging Compass, which shares the concrete steps the contractor is taking to create a more equitable and welcoming workplace for everyone in which everyone has a role.
“The Compass charts a course, firmly grounded in our core values, to deliver on our vision for inclusion and belonging at Sisk: We ask people to ‘Come as you are, do your best work, grow, and have fun at a company where you belong’.”
Sisk A Net Zero Organisation by 2030
Amongst Sisk’s Sustainability Roadmap targets, perhaps the most ambitious is for Sisk to be a Net Zero organisation, without the need for offsets, by 2030. This means eliminating Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.
“Our strategic priorities of MMC, net zero and digital are inextricably linked, and together, they underpin our approach to construction, which is to build as efficiently as we can whilst causing the least disruption possible.
“Perhaps the most innovative and impactful key focus area is the development of a Net Zero Advisory Service for our clients. For most organisations, the Scope 3 emissions account for most of their carbon footprint. Sisk is no different.”
MMC Innovation
Sisk’s Ukrainian Rapid Modular Housing Project (URMH) won MMC Project of the Year at the Irish Construction Industry Excellence Awards. The award submission was based on three of the seven sites – Cork Mahon, Sligo and Claremorris – which house 104 modules.
“URMH was a first-of-a-kind project in Ireland (3D primary structural systems), and a detailed lessons-learned pack has been developed incorporating feedback from site teams, consultants, manufacturers and our client, the Office of Public Works.
“We are very proud of this project as it brought together the leading players in the Irish MMC market to collaborate and deliver quality modular homes at speed and within budget. It demonstrated that Irish offsite manufacturers can work together, and I hope, now we have shown what can be done, that we can kick on from here and start delivering homes in Ireland at the scale that is needed.”
Skills shortage
Sisk has consistently advocated for proactively addressing the skills shortage that the industry faces.
“Our commitment to skills development in Ireland is demonstrable by our hugely successful in-house carpentry and joinery centre in Dublin and our continued support of the Ireland Skills Live competition at The RDS, Dublin, that saw 20,000 second-level students attend this event last September.
“In the UK, in my role as vice-chair of Build UK and CEO of Sisk, I attended the launch of Open Doors 2024 alongside Julie White, Chair of Build UK, at our Great Charles Street project in Birmingham city centre. Open Doors takes visitors behind the scenes to showcase the fantastic range of careers available in construction across the UK.”
In conclusion
Paul Brown is optimistic about Sisk’s future despite global challenges. “Sisk will keep building on our strengths. We’re nearing the ideal mix of clients. Revenue isn’t our primary driver. We don’t face pressure from shareholders to increase it. We will size the business appropriately and keep enhancing our service capabilities to support growth. My role is to solidify our market position and ensure a sustainable return for the business and our shareholders,” Paul Brown concludes.