The turnover of Walls Construction in 2021 was €303m, up from the €275m achieved in 2020. The company estimates that the second Covid-19 shutdown cost a quarter of the year’s production time, giving it an effective annualised turnover of circa €400m. In 2022, Walls predicts a 10% increase in turnover above last year’s effective rate, to a figure closer to €450m.
Total Turnover:
€303M
ROI Turnover:
€303M
Walls Construction employs over 400 staff, with its construction teams dominated by homegrown talent via the firm’s graduate recruitment and management training programmes. The company continues recruiting across all disciplines, including engineering, quantity surveying, building services and site management.
Notwithstanding the major intake of new personnel over the past five years, the average length of service in Walls is just under 20 years, so employees who are professionally driven to deliver the best for their colleagues and clients are highly experienced in their respective areas of responsibility.
The company’s supply chain consists of partners of long-standing, in many instances have close personal and professional relationships with management teams, who are committed to the company ideal of teamwork and, together with Walls’ design team partners, exceeding client expectations.
Walls Construction Projects
Walls’ workload breaks down across various sectors in Ireland as follows: Residential 45%; commercial (new build) 20%; fit-outs 15%; industrial 10%; and institutional 10%. The large-scale nature of many of its private residential sector (PRS) projects provides multiple years of turnover, which gives the business a high degree of medium-term commercial viability, traditionally absent in the construction sector.
Its PRS projects are generally spread over a small number of repeat clients, currently Park Developments, the Marlet Property Group, Ardstone and Royalton, where the partnering approach ensures benefits for all. Commercial office projects currently on site are with Marlet, Ballymore, Irish Life, and the Killeen Group, An Post Headquarters, with the Echelon Dub10 Data Centre, DCU Futuretech Building, making up its complement of work in other sectors. Walls’ pipeline of projects for the next three years (2023, 2024 and 2025) is strong, with both contracted work and several potential projects for existing clients.
Construction costs
Most upcoming projects are for privately funded clients and therefore are only viable if they are commercially sustainable. In the PRS sector, rising construction costs threaten the viability of many projects, where sites may have been acquired at a high cost.
With 45% of its turnover in this sector, Walls Construction works with its clients, design teams and supply chain to identify alternative methods of construction or specification that can generate savings. The ultimate aim is to counteract the inflationary effects of supply chain disruption arising from Brexit, the Covid legacy and the war in Ukraine.
Walls Construction Environmental, Social and Governance Principles
Walls Construction is proactive on the sustainability front. It has developed an environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy plan for the three years to 2025, which will build on much of the work already done through its years of successful certification to standards ISO 14001 and 45001. It will also build on its stated commitment to work sustainably and conscientiously as per its clients’ requirements.
CEO Eugene O’Shea comments: “Our ESG policies are designed to ensure that sustainability and people are at the forefront of our business, and they are reviewed, updated, and communicated to employees, supply chain partners, design teams and clients. Our focus is on a range of measures including sustainability and biodiversity enhancement, water protection and conservation, waste and carbon management, and social and governance objectives.”
Future-proofing
Never reluctant to harness technology and modern methods of construction to achieve its goals, Walls considers these essential for enhancing not just efficiency and productivity but also sustainability and all-round quality. For example, the company can now quickly and easily gather data on a project in a way that would simply not have been possible previously, resulting in real-time performance feedback, as well as details on safety, quality, and delivery timelines. It all adds up to give a far more granular picture of how a project is going – allowing the company to react swiftly to any potential stumbling blocks before they have a chance to arise.
No 8: Walls Construction Ltd
ADDRESS: Rosemount House, Northern Cross, Malahide Road, Dublin 17.
PHONE: 01 867 3800
WEB: www.walls.ie
LINKEDIN: Walls Construction
TWITTER: @WallsConstruct
INSTAGRAM: @walls_construction
KEY EXECUTIVES: Eugene O’Shea, CEO; Adrian Corcoran, COO; Frank Kelly, COO; Willie White, Commercial Director; Barry Hennessy, Business Development Director.
KEY ACTIVITIES: Main Contractor
YEAR END: 31/12/2021