00:00
Greg Wilkes
So on today’s podcast, we’re interviewing Charlie Fitzgibbon. I met Charlie about a year ago at an event that I held in London and we really connected and it was fascinating to see what he was up to in the construction industry and he’d actually made some tremendous progress as a business owner. Why you’re going to find this so interesting is because Charlie’s journey took him from contractor and project manager all the way through to a developer. So if you’ve ever wanted to into your own developments and you want to find out what it takes to get into joint ventures, then you’re going to find this podcast really interesting. So let’s jump in. Charlie, absolutely fantastic to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us from Edinburgh.
00:39
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Yeah, thank you for having me, Greg. I’m looking forward to chatting shop with.
00:42
Greg Wilkes
You and it’s really good to have you on because we met it was earlier this year, wasn’t it, in, I think, June at an event that I held in London?
00:52
Charlie Fitzgibbon
That sounds about right. Yeah. So it all blurs together. I can’t remember when it was, but yeah, I came to one of your events, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and it’s great to reconnect and chat to you again.
01:01
Greg Wilkes
Awesome. Yeah, it’s really good to get some like minded business owners in a room together and talk strategy and tactics and what it’s like being in the trenches. So, yeah, great to have you there, Charlie, and it was nice when you reached out and talked about potentially coming on the show and what you have to say sounds really interesting. So looking forward to running into this, mate. So before we dive in, Charlie, just to let my listeners know who you are and what you’re up to, do. You want to give us a little. Brief introduction about yourself, what you’re currently doing in the industry and the type of work you’re doing?
01:31
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Sure. So I’m managing director of Edinburgh Construction. We’ve been going for six or seven years now. I’ll lose track. It’s been quite a fast paced trajectory of growth. We focus mostly in residential construction. We do some commercial and some industrial works as well. I myself am a chippy to trade and that’s where the business started, built it up with a couple of guys and now we’re 40 plus staff several projects at any given time. We also do our own development, so we buy land, we build out again, mostly in residential. And our focus is sort of I know everybody says this, but we’re value driven, design led. We like to deliver quality that doesn’t necessarily mean the most expensive on the market, but quality nonetheless. We like spaces that people enjoy and continue to enjoy, to use. And that’s us in a nutshell, really?
02:28
Greg Wilkes
Yeah.
02:28
Greg Wilkes
Awesome. So to give us a guide of the size of the projects that you’re currently focused on, what are you currently doing for the residential market and then maybe. What type of developments do you generally take on?
02:40
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Sure, we’ve gone through various evolutions in the business and we’ve landed in our sweet spot, which is multi home, I should say. I don’t like using the word unit, multi home site, so it could be anything from a small block of flats to 30 plus houses one site. We do the OD single residence. If we really like the sound of the job, I e it’s nicely designed or we’ve got a particular connection with the clients, that just makes sense. But the bulk of our work is ten homes or above, maybe some commercial mixed use elements to it. Contract value from 1 million up to 25 million is our space. So we’re not competing with the big nationals out there, but we’re not just a man in a van operation either.
03:30
Greg Wilkes
Yeah, you’re holding your own. That sounds awesome. So that’s really successful, Charlie, and congratulations on how quickly you built that business. And I know when I spoke to you at the event and I spoke to you previously about some stuff, it’s really good to see what you’ve been doing in your construction business and how quickly you’ve grown. It, so well done on that. Maybe you could just share a little bit of your journey with us and let us know how you managed to get to where you’re at. Because I know you said you haven’t got any formal qualifications, have you? You’re not university educated. What were the key challenges for someone that’s not got formal qualifications like that, which most of us don’t in construction?
04:05
Greg Wilkes
Tell us how you overcome some of those challenges and what you might have had to deal with to get to where you are.
04:09
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Yeah, I mean, challenges can be helpful sometimes. It depends which way you look at it. So, yeah, I left school before I turned 16, was politely nudged out the door, I think was maybe a diplomatic way of putting it. And like most people at that age, without much direction in life, construction in the UK at least, is where a lot of people end up. And it’s a bittersweet because maybe there’s some negative connotations to people that follow that route, know, they’re the people that weren’t smart enough for school or smart enough for university. But I really took to it. I just fell in love. So I started off just laboring on construction sites, that’s what I fell into. And then I got some pretty cool little bespoke jobs, sort of working alongside other trades, doing bits and pieces that I quite enjoyed.
05:00
Charlie Fitzgibbon
And I always had an affinity to carpentry to joinery out of all the trades that I looked at, that made sense to me. I just liked it, I liked using my hands, I liked the product, I liked working with typically timber or wood as a material. And I identified that carpentry was sort of the one trade, probably more than others and I’m probably going to get a lot of grief for saying this, but sees more of a job from the ground up. So I just like that. I did my apprenticeship and I got picked up by a company, an international firm, who was a client of ours. So I progressed, my boss retired and me and his son ended up sort of running a lot of the jobs, even though I was very young.
05:42
Charlie Fitzgibbon
And one of our clients was quite a large international consultancy firm. They were representing the developer on the project and they offered me a management program with them. So I went to join them. Worked all over the place in my early 20s. So I was in America, I was in Dubai, I was in New Zealand, I was in Australia, I was in Asia for a period. South Asia, India, Singapore, all over. And I was getting into client side project management and it was a real eye opener because I got to see the business of the industry. So I was sort of on the thin end of the wedge, dealing with clients sort of very front facing and not for me that my career has ever been materialistically geared, but we’d be delivering a multi million.
06:34
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Pound project and the clients would turn up in their helicopter or their Bentley for about 2 hours. Look around, shake your hand and leave. So I thought, maybe there’s more to this. And I always had it in the back of my head that I wanted to start my own business. I don’t think I was a very good employee. Maybe that sort of stemmed from being an early leaver at school. I was always that person that thought they could do it better or had their own ideas. Bit of a backseat driver, true entrepreneur. Yeah, entrepreneur, pain in the ass, whatever you want to look at, you know. Well, a couple of years later I thought, well, let’s try this myself.
07:10
Charlie Fitzgibbon
So moved back to the UK, started Edinburgh construction myself and a couple of guys in a van is how it started and it’s just been taking strides ever since.
07:20
Greg Wilkes
Fantastic. So to go from that to where you’re at now obviously taking on 20 million pound developments of multi units. That’s a big scale, a big jump to go through. And the problem we see in construction so often is people jump too quick and then they haven’t quite grasped the financial side of things and it can be really painful. If you get a 20 million pound project wrong, it’s going to completely sink you and the business is no more. So how have you managed to navigate that? How do you approach your finances and planning? Especially given that don’t necessarily come from that sort of background. What advice would you give us there?
08:02
Charlie Fitzgibbon
There’s no magic bullet. Cash flow is what will kill any business quicker than anything else. You can have 100 million on your books. You can have 10 million, your books, whatever it is, if you don’t have the cash flow to deliver it, you’re nothing. And you’ll be in the dirt quicker than you can pick up a shovel to make some concrete so you have cash flow. Everybody’s journey is different. My journey was a lot of our clients were developers and they recognized what were doing, saw the ambition, saw the interest, and we always did what we said were going to do. If we entered into a project, we made damn sure that we delivered as per the expectations. And I guess that was recognized. And we got some support from some of our clients.
08:46
Charlie Fitzgibbon
So we started to engage in joint ventures with clients and that worked for us. So we would put a little bit of finance in, we would deliver the works and build it from there. And that was a bit of an unlocking moment for me when I went from sort of slaving over construction projects to make whatever margin you’re making up until being a partner in the development. But we have strategically kept the trading side of the business full throttle. Don’t intend on becoming exclusively a developer. We want to keep the trading side of the business there for cash flow reasons. Every month you need checks coming in that’s going to keep the lights on, pay all the guys. The last thing you want to do is let anybody down, whether it’s suppliers, subcontractors, your men, and all the rest of it.
09:35
Charlie Fitzgibbon
So you need to make sure that you have a cash flow plan. And we are quite sensible with the business. So we managed to get some financing facilities that allowed us to fund our growth to demonstrate what were doing. And we got some support that way. And then the other thing is, just being on top of it, you need to be quite sharp. So keep an eye on the invoices, make sure you know what you’re paying, making sure that payments going out the door have been authorized and they’re assigned to the right job and you’ve got everything in place. Correct financial management, I mean, I say as if it’s easy. This has been a learning curve for us, but correct financial management is something that we’re still developing today and I think that will be a never ending journey.
10:19
Charlie Fitzgibbon
But making sure that you’re running a smooth operation in terms of what’s coming in and what’s going out. Making sure that at the end of every month you’ve got more in the door than more out the door. And sometimes that’s one thing that I’ve had to learn, is you can’t always be the nice guy. Sometimes you need to hold people accountable. We’ve all been there. A subcontractor that’s overclaiming or a supplier that’s overcharging, whatever. I believe in being firm and fair and this is what we’ve agreed to make sure that you’ve got all your contracts in place so that everybody knows the expectations. When you’re entering into a contract, you know the expectations, your client knows the expectations, your subcontractors know the expectations and you just stick to that.
11:03
Charlie Fitzgibbon
And if there’s any variations, you make sure everybody knows about it as quick as you can cause any surprises.
11:10
Greg Wilkes
Yeah, I think you’ve touched on some really valuable points there, Charlie. Just coming back to something you said because I think there’s some real value in this for the listeners. Everyone wants to get into developments. Most builders that I speak to, 80% to 90%, that I’d love to do my own developments in the end. And I think it’s great that you found your way in by doing the joint ventures. That’s a really key way of doing that. And I just want to come back to the financial side of that in a second. But maybe just let us know. How did you approach that? How did you identify that as a strategy and then manage to sort of get your foot in the door with that? What sort of deals did you offer to make it appealing to others to want to partner with you?
11:49
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Every project is different. I think what a lot of builders and contractors maybe underestimate, is their own value. Particularly if you’ve worked in a sector where you’re delivering projects for developers, you always think that the client is in a different league or in a different planet even. But I think one of the things that I identified is where are the guys actually delivers this? Another thing that we managed to capitalize on was, and maybe this is location dependent Edinburgh. It’s a major city, but it’s a small town feel. And we built up quite a network quite quickly. So were engaging with a handful of architects, surveyors, monitoring surveyors, different people that were seeing sites. So not only did we recognize that we could be an ideal partner for a developer, we could also find sites and offer them to developers.
12:44
Charlie Fitzgibbon
So were being offered stuff by architects and surveyors saying, oh, Charlie, we’re doing a feasibility study for this. Do you know anybody that might be interested? So all of a sudden, I could get in touch with one of our existing clients who were we know they’re a developer, we know what sort of things like and say, hey, we’ve got access to this site, it’s off market. We’ve sort of hashed out some numbers in terms of build costs, high level stuff. We reckon there’s a bit of profit in that. What do you reckon? And we’re going together and we always put a bit of skin in the game because at the same time, you don’t want to come across as the sort of vulture, just preying on anybody else.
13:24
Charlie Fitzgibbon
We’ll put our money where our mouth is, we’ll engage, but it’s just showing value and building those relationships. We can do this. This is our track record. This is our team. They’ve got the skill sets here’s, a few examples. And then the other bit, I guess, is just the old school stuff, which is the personal relationship building, where you spend the time with them, you chat through their concerns, you say, okay, this is the risk, this is the risk. Don’t be naive to it. Talk through the risks. What you’re going to do if you encounter XYZ? I don’t know. It’s easy to say now that we’re doing much larger projects, but there weren’t always large projects. I mean, the first few little developments that we did with our own money were just flipping like two bedroom flats in pretty rubbish areas, if I’m honest.
14:09
Charlie Fitzgibbon
But you do a few of those, you prove that you can do it, you get some money in the bank and then you move on to the next one. I think it’s nice to be ambitious and it’s nice to have growth models, but there’s a few key steps that you can’t shortcut. We still see it today because, as I said, a lot of our clients are developers will be asked to price up jobs where somebody’s looking at a piece of land or a building and they want to turn it into apartments or whatever. And we look at it and go, you’re not going to make any money on this.
14:41
Charlie Fitzgibbon
So it’s just having that realistic feet on the ground and understanding what’s a good deal and what’s not a good deal, because you could do ten really good projects, but then it just takes the next one to absolutely sink you. So just being sensible about it as well. It’s good to be ambitious, but keep your feet on the ground, I’d say.
14:58
Greg Wilkes
Yeah, wise words there. That’s really interesting, mentioning how you did that. And I think that’s really valuable for everyone just to think about what is the value that you currently hold at the minute? Because every construction business holds some value. And whether that’s being able to find the sites or, as you say, you’re the ones delivering it. You really need to recognize what your strengths are in a business. So anyone listening to this, don’t be scared of joint ventures. You probably know a lot more in many ways than the developer actually does, or the investor. So find those sites and don’t be scared to offer your joint venture deals. Just coming back to something else you said, though, in the joint ventures, and I noticed this when I was doing my own developments.
15:37
Greg Wilkes
It’s great that you’ve actually recognized that you need to keep hold of the construction arm of the business for cash flow purposes. And I think a lot of people make a mistake in this where they get their first development and they think, right, that’s it, I’m never working for clients again, just going to do all my own stuff. There’s a real danger in that, though, isn’t there? Because I don’t think people realize how long developments can potentially take to see the reward out of them. Just talk us around that a little bit more. What’s the potential lifecycle of a development project generally? And why do you need cash flow coming in from other areas?
16:13
Charlie Fitzgibbon
The short answer is, if we jumped to 100% developed, we’d have gone bankrupt by now. To put it bluntly. It’s funny, I was on a call this morning, we’ve got a site in an area of central Scotland that we’re on our fifth anniversary of working through the planning. So it’s a lot of money out the door with a lot of risk attached because there’s no guarantees in development. You can work up the best spreadsheet appraisal that says you’re going to make gazillions, but if the house prices aren’t what you thought they were, if the program extends in a construction contract, if things go over but you’ve got a client engaged and you’re delivering for them, you still get paid for it. As long as you’ve been honest in the development, the buck stops with you.
17:01
Charlie Fitzgibbon
If it goes over tough, the money’s got to come from somewhere. There’s different strategies, of course. Development can be done in so many ways. It’s such a broad area. Our sort of sweet spot is design led residential projects, so good quality residential projects for the open market sale. We’re now in a position where we can hold on to stocks, so we’re just starting the cycle of whereby we’re developing to hold. Nice, but that’s new for us. But the other end of the spectrum is social housing delivering for housing associations or local authorities, where it’s all about volume and lower margins. So even in development, there’s such a breadth of approaches and you need to find what works for you. But the common denominator is it sucks the cash out of you very fast.
17:52
Charlie Fitzgibbon
And, yeah, like I said, we’ve got stuff that we started five years ago and we’ve still not made any return on, and you’re at the mercy of the elements. There’s so many things that can go wrong. And you don’t get paid until that last apartment sold. Typically, as they say, it’s the last few sales that actually is your profit. So until you’ve sold every one of those apartments or houses or whatever, you’re cash out of the door. And if you don’t have a big bank account behind, which I certainly didn’t, that’s going to kill you. So we made sure that if we’re entering into a development, we knew it would cash flow positive and we had the construction arm always going so that there’s checks coming in the door because, like what you said, it sounds brilliant, it sounds romantic.
18:44
Charlie Fitzgibbon
You don’t have to deal with pesky clients and their ridiculous requests and they’re 20 emails a day, I can just be my own boss, sort of thing. Doesn’t work like that. You’re still answerable to people, whether it’s people buying the houses, whether it’s building control, whether it’s planning officers, whether it’s banks, you’re still answerable to people. But the problem is the buck stops with you to be very weary of how these things can trip you up.
19:11
Greg Wilkes
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that’s true. So over the recent years, you’ve obviously had some challenges as you come through your construction business. You’ve had COVID recently. Now we’re seeing inflation, we’re also seeing if you’re doing developments, you’re seeing interest rate rises when you’re borrowing money, so that has a massive impact on funding your development. So how has your company managed to maintain a proactive stance to all of that and maintain your agility going through sort of crisis situations, if you like, and changes in economics in the industry?
19:44
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Yeah, I think agility is the word you need to have a bit of flexibility. And again, it comes back to the point that we’re in a fortunate situation where we’ve got the contracting arms, so we’re able to maybe weather storms a bit stronger than others. I mean, yeah, there’s been a whole host of challenges I’m sure everybody listening will appreciate from Pandemic. Interest rates planning is a chokehold on the housing market and we’ve just made sure that it’s going to sound flippant, but we’ve never done anything too stupid, we’ve never pushed ourselves and sailed too close to the wind that if something happened, we’d be ruined. So you always need to make sure that you’re keeping yourself comfortable. Great to be ambitious, but don’t push it, because this world that we live in doesn’t show any mercy if you’re up against it.
20:39
Charlie Fitzgibbon
And then I guess just being brave to make some decisions. So, for example, COVID were having an awful time with one site whereby we couldn’t progress. The site was a residential scheme and we couldn’t progress it because the bill and patrol had insisted that they inspected certain stages, which we agreed to, but that was fine up until Bill and Control closed their office for twelve months. So we had sites jammed up and were brave to make certain decisions that we confronted our client about it and just told them as it was, you’re not going to want to hear this, but this is what we’re dealing with. And we made sure the client was very much a part of the decision making process. Rather than us trying to carry the burden, we also made some pivots.
21:28
Charlie Fitzgibbon
So we looked at some different sites, just as an example. That particular site was in quite a built up urban area, which we knew we couldn’t deliver with in a safe way during the pandemic, so we closed the doors, we made quite a nice acquisition of another contract that was in distress. We moved into that which was much more open, more space, we set different things, so we had split breaks, so the canteen was never overwhelmed. We put hand wash stations in. We split staff up, we communicated all of our guys and this is what we’re doing. What’s your feedback? What’s your thoughts? We wrote to our local MP, we wrote to our local council and we wrote to Building Standards. Just a simple letter saying, this is what we’re going to do. If you’ve got an issue, let us know.
22:17
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Nobody wrote back, but we just put it out there, I guess being a bit bold to do that. So many companies just sort of either went along thinking that this will just be a quick thing and it’ll roll over and we’re back to business. A lot of companies just sort of took it day by day. We just went, all right, this is what we’re going to do, let’s do it, sort of thing. Sounds funny in hindsight, but I guess just trusting that were capable of making good decisions and just running with it and we never closed our doors once, we never furloughed a single staff member. We had situations of people coming down with COVID but we did all the right things and isolated and all the rest of it, and we’re still here. And then, yeah, recent interest rates. Again, similar philosophies apply.
23:05
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Just being transparent and honest. If we’ve got a situation, we’ll tell whoever it impacts right away, say, look, this is what we’re facing when we price this job. We priced the electrical package at 260 grand. Well, now suppliers have said that they’re only keeping their prices for seven days and the last price we got just for the materials is 300 grand. What you want to do about it? And in construction, again, it goes back to what we said. It’s maybe undervaluing how much of a part the contractor has to play. Clients don’t want you to struggle. They want the project delivered just as much as we do. So coming together and saying, this is what we’re facing, we’re not magicians with all these solutions, what can we do about it?
23:51
Charlie Fitzgibbon
And we found that most people actually responded really positively to that, enabled us to weather through.
23:59
Greg Wilkes
Yeah, that’s awesome. So as you’re talking through this, Charlie, there’s clearly different leadership abilities you have as a business owner, which is really important in construction. We’ve got to make the right decisions for the team and we want to lead them the right way. And the way we deal with clients, we need to be a leader in that way too. So what do you think of leadership in general in construction? Because sometimes it’s a little bit of a dinosaur industry, isn’t it? We can see a lot of veterans in it that need to get out of the industry and struggle making decisions like you just have. So how do you think young people coming into the industry can influence change for the better and better leaders?
24:42
Charlie Fitzgibbon
It’s hard for starters, but I think just trusting yourself is the main thing particularly you say young people come into the industry. That was a challenge I faced. I was working on quite considerable projects as a 21 year old and I was supposed to be telling people what to do. And if you’ve got a squad of time served, gray haired, gruff looking builders and you’re the guy telling what to do, you need a bloody mean what you say, otherwise they’re not going to take you seriously whatsoever. And leadership for me is a transient thing. It changes based on the situation, changes depending on who you are as a person as well. I think being authentic is important. You need to be yourself. No one can ever pretend to be somebody else and successfully.
25:29
Charlie Fitzgibbon
If you’re a young person coming into the industry, don’t be afraid to speak your mind and say things. The construction sector, the building sector as a whole right now there’s some real challenges to be faced. We’re looking at price increase, changing how we can deliver projects. We’re looking at sustainability and net carbon, net zero carbon targets that are being that the construction industry has really got a magnifying lens on because we’re one of the biggest contributors looking at health and safety in the workplace and how we can better that, not just physically, but mentally as well. We’re looking at technologies in the evolution of how homes or spaces are built. So there’s all these things that probably the younger generations are best poised to have an influence because they’re the ones that are less hardened to. This is how it’s done.
26:24
Charlie Fitzgibbon
And I think any healthy work environment recognizes that and listens to that. I was very fortunate to always work in places where my seniors respected ideas and would listen. As long as you’re sensible, you’re not saying silly things. So I think, in short, just not to be afraid to say what you think and also listen as well. You can’t just be a talk to a toy. You need to listen and I guess find that middle ground. But I suppose now more than ever we need some fresh ideas because what we’ve got going on currently isn’t sustainable in many ways.
27:00
Greg Wilkes
No, exactly. And there’s definitely a big problem in the industry for sustainability, isn’t there, because of it’s great to have that idea of sustainability. I remember just thinking back years ago, I started a company, it was called Ecolofts and I probably did this must be nearly 20 OD years ago and I just thought, the Buzword Eco, we’re going to do green loft conversions and we’re going to do this and that. And it was an absolute flop because the cost of delivering an Eco loft conversion, people just didn’t want to pay for it. The idea was great and we did a big exhibition at one of the big Grand Designs events and the Buz around it was unbelievable. But the reality was actually getting those sales orders over the line.
27:42
Greg Wilkes
Didn’t happen because people won’t pay for extra and not necessarily pay a lot more for it. So where do you see the difficulties in sustainability in construction? What do you think we’re going to need to do to turn the corner on that? What needs to happen?
27:56
Charlie Fitzgibbon
There’s lots of challenges but there’s lots of opportunities. That’s a really good example and you’re absolutely right. I mean, the cost was always a real barrier to entry to some of these solutions and these technologies. But one of the opportunities right now is the gaps closing. You’ve got construction material inflation, which is eroding traditional build methods, and you’ve also got an increased cost in living where people today are far more conscious about their energy bills, their heat usage, the efficiency of their home. So I’d actually be interested in how your loft business would do today versus then because I think the clients expectations have changed and the education has changed. People are far more aware now.
28:40
Charlie Fitzgibbon
If you’re in an old drafty house and your energy bills have doubled this time versus last year, of course you’re going to want to make sure that you’re sealing any drafts and you’ve got the right amount of insulation and all the rest of it. So I think there’s some opportunities there. The challenges, I think, is approach. So I’m always a bit cautious when I talk about regulations, but there is some regulatory intervention in our sector which you can argue whether is an educated approach or not. But one thing that is there’s an expectation level for our sector to change. And alongside that, our sector is less than ever inability to address that. We’ve got a labor problem, we’ve got less young people entering construction as a career choice as to leave school. That’s a fact.
29:29
Charlie Fitzgibbon
And it’s a trajectory that doesn’t look like it’s going to change. We’ve got skill shortages. So the methods of construction have evolved. Traditional build is being replaced by modern methods constructions, right through the seven categories, through metric panelized systems, M and E. And the skill sets of contractors that are able to deliver those methods are few and far between. So we’ve got these two contrasting worlds where there’s a higher demand from the areas that we work in and a diminishing ability to deliver that. So we need to close that gap. So I think that the supply chain needs a lot of incentive, which it doesn’t have right now. It’s no wonder that you’ve got lots of modern method construction suppliers getting into financial trouble because it’s not really a fertile ground right now because people still fixated on traditional build. Traditional build. Traditional build.
30:31
Charlie Fitzgibbon
So I think, yes, some support in the supply chain to incentivize businesses to invest in these technologies is necessary and a real incentive for people to take construction as a career choice. I mean, we talked earlier on how I felt. It was just sort of whoops, there I am. But I actually quite like it. People don’t want to work in construction as much. This connotation of it’s dirty and it’s got to sit and got in the rain and get covered in mud and all the rest of it. The reality, as you’ll know, is far from it. It’s incredibly fulfilling, it’s incredibly exciting. You can make a really good living and build wealth from it. You can travel the world. It’s a never ending rabbit hole of learning. You can never exhaust the potential to discover more in the sector.
31:23
Charlie Fitzgibbon
So I think it’s about encouraging people to enter the industry so that we can capitalize on these technologies that are already out there. We’ve already got solutions. It’s just we don’t have, as a sector, as an industry, the ability to yet deliver them at scale, or at least at a scale that’s required. And clients are buying into it. Commercial clients are there, residential clients are there, local authorities are there. It’s just the sector needs the ability to deliver it.
31:50
Greg Wilkes
I think you’re right there, Charlie. Interestingly thinking about some of the changes we’re now facing with AI and how quickly that’s coming on board and what that’s going to potentially do for different jobs. And you think all the school leavers that were going to be accountants and lawyers and all these jobs that potentially could be decimated in a few years because of AI. You do wonder if we’re going to get a little bit of a complete reversal on this and whether everyone want to be like, well, actually, AI is not going to take away me being a bricklayer or a carpenter joiner. Obviously we’re going to get more better methods of construction and maybe more modular houses than that. But construction is not going anywhere, is it? And that’s not really going to disrupt that industry too much.
32:32
Charlie Fitzgibbon
No, it’s not going anywhere. I mean, people joke about, oh, you’ve got robots that can build house, which is true, but it’s not going anywhere. It still very much needs hand on, but there’s also new opportunities there in the tech side. I mean, AI, I think, has yet to really make a dent in construction, but there’s scope there. BIM systems and exchange of information and processes could be revolutionized, but you need the people to come in, to come up with the ideas, to implement the ideas and to manage them. It’s an opportunity for people that are ambitious and excited enough to really make waves.
33:11
Greg Wilkes
Yeah, definitely. So, Charlie, maybe a bit of parting advice for let’s imagine we’re talking to 16 year old Charlie and you’re giving yourself some advice, just getting into the industry, someone that’s aspiring to be an entrepreneur or they want to be a developer. What advice would you give them? How should they get started? What sort of career path or advice would you tell them to take?
33:33
Charlie Fitzgibbon
I’d say get in front of as many people as possible, interact with the industry. It’s a cliche, but surround yourself with good people. Absorb, listen and learn. Maybe try some different jobs at different firms just to get an understanding as to the way it works before jumping on your own and then just back yourself and trust yourself. Be sensible, keep your feet on the ground. Don’t get too caught up that you’re going to be building skyscrapers in ten years, because it rarely happens. But, yeah, stay sensible, keep focused. It’s a lot of hard work, so you can’t be afraid of hard work. Anybody that works in construction knows it starts early and finishes late, but therein lies a lot of the satisfaction as well. But, yeah, I think definitely surround yourself with people doing it.
34:19
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Get in front of them, listen to them, find out how they did it, listen to their stories, understand how construction sites works, how do people interact with the day on a construction site, what goes on, what the process is, what time do people turn up, what time do they clock off, what happens in between? And just immerse yourself in it and hopefully by which time you still enjoy it, and then you’ll have all the ammunition you need to go and build a successful career in it.
34:46
Greg Wilkes
Awesome. That’s fantastic. So, Charlie, we’ve got different people from all over the world listening to this and different architects and engineers and subcontractors, so there’s no doubt some in Edinburgh that might want to contact to you after this show and just have a little chat and catch up or maybe want to come and work for your business. So do you want to just tell us who you are? Just give us the link. So if anyone wants to check you out a little bit more, they can do.
35:10
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Yeah, it’s all in our website. So, Edinburgh Construction, if you go there’s all the relevant stuff there’s. Get in, know there’s an email address, we’re on Instagram, on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn. If you go on the website, you’ll find my LinkedIn thing, drop me a message through there. It’s the best way to get in touch with me. And, yeah, we’re delighted to hear from people, talk to people, chat, shop, learn, listen, chat. It’s all good for us. So happy for people to reach out.
35:39
Greg Wilkes
Fantastic. Well, great to have you on, Charlie, and hopefully we can catch up again at another event sometime. I’m doing another one next year, so I’ll let you know when that’s available, because great to be in a room with like minded business owners. Really appreciate your advice today and I wish you all the best.
35:53
Charlie Fitzgibbon
Brilliant. Thanks, Greg. I enjoyed it.
