Natural born digger

As a 22-year-old, Chris Haughey had aspirations to run his own firm. In just six years, West Midlands-based CJ Haughey Construction has managed to become a well-respected groundworks contractor with a multi-million pound turnover. Paul Howard went to meet the man.

TEXT: At only 28 years old, and already the owner of a company with 100 employees and a turnover of some 6.5 million, it's no surprise when Chris Haughey says he always knew he wanted to set up and run his own business.
The only surprise is that this business is in construction. "Working in construction is the last thing I was thinking of," says the West Midlands-based entrepreneur. "I used to work in construction and was looking at other businesses I could set up. I ran a burger van at weekends in Coventry to start with, and considered setting up a bouncy castle hire business after that."
His enthusiasm for this idea soon deflated, however, and he kept coming back to construction, almost by default, as an industry he knew well.
"I grew up on a farm - we had 48 bullocks, and 48ha - and used to work there before and after school, but once I left school, my cousin was a carpenter so I went with him to work in the holding tanks in a reservoir. I used to strip shutters, sort clips into baskets, all for 20 a day.
"My next job was working as a labourer doing things like laying cables for TV. I did this for a couple of years."

Sent to Coventry
At this point his parents moved to Coventry and Haughey followed to work for the next three years for a friend of his dad's who ran a small civil engineering contractor. "They did deep sewerage as a groundworks subbie to big companies. I worked as a pipe slinger and I also had my CTA card to drive 13t and bigger diggers. I just watched and learned."
It appears that he has learned pretty well. In only six years, and having started at the tender age of 22, CJ Haughey Construction has become a respected groundworks contractor from Birmingham to Bristol and beyond.
Not that Haughey was without doubts when he first embarked on his entrepreneurial adventure. "I had so many doubts about going into groundworks. A lot of people have tried and failed - good people who've been working in the sector for years. You see a lot of companies that go under after 18 months, two years maximum."
In spite of this, and with parental encouragement ringing in his ears ("My Dad just said 'go for it'") he took out a loan for 14,000 and set the ball rolling.
It wasn't easy to start with. "Just taking out that kind of loan, I knew it would mean no going out for five years, no social life." Perhaps more importantly, it was difficult to get people to come and work for a 22-year-old.
Nevertheless, turnover in his first year was 80,000, earned by Haughey, the two members of staff he had persuaded to join him, and one excavator.
In the six years since then, the company has grown into a full-blown groundworks contractor capable of looking after everything on site up to damp proof level. "This includes foundations, drainage, car parks, sewers, formwork," says Haughey.
"Also, and slightly unusually, we do concrete flooring. We're quite proud of this ability, we're quite good at it."
Ironic as it may seem in one so young, one reason identified by Haughey for his success so far is his experience at the coal face of the industry - the six years he spent working on the tools before becoming a boss. "I can go on site and speak in a language the boys understand. Yet I can also meet top contractors in the boardroom and talk professionally about contracts worth millions of pounds."
And being professional is the key. "We avoid competing on price. We want to pitch the company as a one-stop shop for all groundworking needs. We'll look after everything from labour, plant and materials to engineering input."
By and large, he has found people are prepared to pay slightly more for this level of service, a level which is ensured by a significant degree of direct, centralised control. "We want to look after all of the supply chain as this means less wastage and repetition of roles."

Staff levels
This also justifies having the extra people required to do this, such as the plant manager taken on by the company a couple of months ago. "Managing our fleet had become such a significant part of the business that we needed somebody to organise servicing and maintenance and work out what's needed on each site by liaising with foremen and project managers about forward workload," says Haughey. "He also needs to arrange cross-hire."
Not that there is as much of this as with other companies, as he prefers to own as much of his machinery as possible. "It's more cost-effective," he explains. "Given the continuity of our work, the machines should be at work all of the time."
According to Haughey, this oft expounded theory can in fact be translated into practice - he maintains the company has utilisation rates of between 95% and 100%. Indeed, such is the efficiency of the operation to date that the company doesn't have a big yard to store plant in. Instead, it has an office in Coventry, with limited outside space.
There are times, however, when running such a tight ship means hiring in is inevitable, to cope with surges in demand. "We're currently hiring a 36t excavator on a big muckshifting job. We don't do enough out-and-out muckshifting to carry a machine of that size all year round."
Nevertheless, the plan is to avoid hire as much as possible. "Our aim is to push plant hire bills right down - I don't like hiring. The money companies make by hiring, we should be able to save by buying."
And buying plant is something the company has done quite a lot of recently, with the purchase of five Hitachi Zaxis excavators from 3t to 13t. This has taken the total fleet of excavators to 20, all of which are Hitachi. "We buy them on the basis of them being good machines and having the best residual values," says Haughey.
The company also has fourteen 6t dumpers, again all from a single supplier, this time Terex. "The benefits of buying from one manufacturer are that they believe you when you say you want five machines, and that it helps when it comes to increasing your buying power."

Buying kit
All machines are bought brand new, partly to ensure a professional image, partly to remove, as far as possible, the risk of breakdowns. "We're very pro-active in terms of servicing requirements," he adds. "We book in machines in advance to accommodate the necessary service visits, which are all done by the manufacturer. Also, we've not got any machines older than two and a half years at the moment. By the time they're three years old, we trade them in."
This plant is mainly put to work across the West Midlands. "The rule of thumb is to be within one and one-and-a-quarter hours of the site for our workers. We've currently got a job on in Bristol, but this is the furthest we'd go."
Rather than geographical expansion, the plan is for growth to be stimulated by diversifying the business. "We'd like to get more involved in bulk earthworks - they go hand in hand with groundworks - although we'd be happy to do this on its own. The tricky bit is getting enough work to justify buying the kit needed to do the work," says Haughey.
"We'd also like to establish the company's reputation and ability when it comes to laying concrete floors as well," he adds. "A lot of groundworks companies shy away from this, but we like it and are good at it."

Bagging contracts
Nevertheless, he admits there is a difficulty in winning the work at the moment as the company doesn't have the speed and capacity afforded by owning specialist kit.
To remedy this, Haughey has plans to invest 200,000 in a laser screed machine - which would be one of only two or three in the West Midlands. "Traditionally, concrete flooring forms part of the smaller contracts if the groundworkers want to do it. We want this to be the case on bigger jobs as well."
If all this expansionism succeeds, the ultimate aim is to increase turnover to around 25m. "We don't necessarily want to be the biggest groundworks contractor in the Midands - just the best," he says with a smile.
Given what he's achieved so far, few would bet against him. <25A0>