From Oklahoma to Offaly: Coleman Yates’ vision for Bretland Construction
From an MBO to doubling its workforce and tripling its revenue, Bretland Construction is entering a new era. The company’s Oklahoma-born managing director, Coleman Yates, speaks with ROBBIE COUSINS about his journey from Oklahoma to Offaly and his ambitious vision to transform a family business into a top-tier Irish contractor.
The dust has settled on one of the Irish construction’s significant management buyouts of 2025. In April, Bretland Construction, a company with a long-standing reputation for quality and integrity, officially began a new chapter.
Coleman Yates
At the helm is Coleman Yates, the firm’s new managing director, who, along with his fellow directors, Anne Marie McCormack, Ruth Heeney, and Tony Meehan, completed the MBO.
Coleman Yates is not a man who shies away from a challenge. A civil engineer with an MBA, he has been in the construction industry his entire life, starting with summer jobs as a labourer. Originally from Oklahoma, he moved to Ireland in 2018.
Bretland Construction
In 2022, he received a call from a recruiter about a deputy managing director role at Bretland Construction. The premise was straightforward: Fechin Daly, the company’s founder, had built a successful business from his garage over 25 years, but recognised it needed new leadership to reach its next phase of growth.
“Fechin had taken the company as far as he felt he could,” Yates recalls. “The bones were there—a debt-free company with a strong reputation—but it was still very much a mom-and-pop-style business. I was asked to come in and see what needed to change.”
Yates joined in January 2023 and immediately set about a methodical transformation. In consultation with Fechin Daly, he reconfigured the senior management team, established a new financing structure and accounting systems. He also expanded critical functions like HR and procurement and brought in a new construction director to strengthen the commercial side of the business. The groundwork was intensive and focused.
“We went through a voluntary audit that first year and got a clean bill of health. We put all the new systems and new people in place over 2023 and 2024,” Yates explains. “It’s been a nearly three-year process to get to this stage.”
The results of this strategic overhaul were immediate and impressive. In his first year, Bretland’s revenue grew 40%, from €13m to €19m. The following year, it jumped another 40% to €28m. With projections of another 30% growth for the current year, the company is on track to hit the mid-€30m mark.
The MBO: From employee to owner
As the company’s growth accelerated, a new opportunity arose. “About a year ago, Fechin came to me and offered to sell the company,” Coleman Yates continues.
Recognising the collective effort that had fueled this success, Yates brought in three key senior leaders as minority shareholders: Tony Meehan, Commercial Director; Ann Marie McCormack, Operations Director; and Ruth Heeney, Finance Director.
“There were a number of people responsible for the growth over the past couple of years,” Yates emphasises. “I may be steering the vehicle, but what we’ve accomplished was a result of everybody working together.”
The MBO, completed in April 2025, was not without its hurdles. With the help of Interpath Advisory, Coleman Yates secured funding from PTSB after the main banks were hesitant to finance a construction MBO. The transition itself, however, has been seamless. “Since the completion of the MBO, the only change has been that Fechin has stepped out of the picture.”
The company’s growth extends beyond its balance sheet. The workforce has nearly doubled, growing from 35 employees when Yates joined to 65 today. 95% of these employees are management or support staff, a testament to the company’s focus on a professional, high-calibre workforce.
Strategic pivots and diversification
When Coleman Yates first joined, Bretland was active in five key sectors: Residential, Commercial, Civil, Pharma, and an architectural glazing division. A key strategic decision was to streamline operations. “The only big change we made was to shut down the glazing division,” Yates explains.
This move allowed the company to focus its resources and expertise on more profitable and scalable areas.
Currently, Bretland’s work is balanced across four main sectors: Housing, 50%; Light Civils, 25%; Pharma and Commercial Work, 25%.
The company has taken on more large-scale housing projects and light civils work with local authorities in Laois, South County Dublin, Kildare, and Wicklow. It is also working with a number of approved housing bodies (AHBs).
Its operations in the pharma sector have also been a significant success. Bretland is now working for clients that include Pfizer (at their Grangecastle and Newbridge locations), MSD, Lexion, and Gamma Medical.
“The approach is considerably different on the pharma projects,” Yates says. “There are many different processes involved in working in this field. So we have a core team that works solely on pharma projects.”
The road ahead
Coleman Yates is a man with a clear, ambitious long-term goal: to turn Bretland into a top-tier-2 or a lower tier-1 contractor within the next five years. This will require the company to hit revenues of €100m and higher.
“We’ve achieved growth organically on the back of performance and successful jobs,” he says. “The larger we get, the more people we have and the more jobs we can tender for. As we grow, we’re able to qualify for the bigger jobs because we have a history of performance behind us now.”
Yates is keen to build on the company’s reputation for integrity, safety, and sustainability – A core value passed on by Fechin Daly. The goal is to be seen by clients as “accessible, honest, and straightforward to deal with.”
On a broader industry level, Yates identifies some significant challenges, particularly planning and red tape in Ireland, which he finds much more cumbersome than in other countries where he has worked.
“The fact that every local authority has a different set of standards or requirements can be frustrating and needlessly time-consuming,” he comments.
He also believes that meeting Ireland’s housing demand will require a shift away from traditional concrete block construction and towards modern methods of construction (MMC) like timber frame.
A collaborative philosophy
Despite these challenges, Coleman Yates is confident in his team. The management structure is collaborative and supportive. “We meet as a team, share our successes and frustrations, advise each other based on our experience, and make decisions for the betterment of the company,” he says. “We all play to our strengths.”
This sense of collaboration extends to the entire workforce. Yates describes the company as being a “very open-door business” and views it as a family. “We’re all friends, and we want to make sure that the business is successful, so our people and their families are successful, secure and comfortable,” he concludes.
Here to grow
Under Coleman Yates’ leadership, Bretland Construction is poised for a new era of growth and influence. The MBO marks not an end but a new beginning, built on a foundation of hard work, strategic vision, and a commitment to excellence. As it continues to grow, Coleman Yates aims for Bretland to be a key partner in Ireland’s future development. We want to work with more local authorities, AHBs and the Land Development Agency. We’re here to grow and be part of everything that is Ireland,” he states with a determined smile. e. “We’re just getting to a point where we’re big enough to be of value to a lot of those entities,” he concludes.