A fast-growing North Wales builder is bucking any construction slowdown with an order book bulging with £14 million of new work including a trio of exciting low energy housing contracts.
Brenig Construction actually gained £6 million in orders and have taken on seven staff since lockdown, and they have continued to attract new contracts since their return to work.
The projects involving ultra-low energy passive housing, among the first of their kind in Wales, are in Old Colwyn, Llanrwst and in Denbigh where they are due to put shovels in the ground later this month on a 22-property development on behalf of Denbighshire County Council.
The company, based in Mochdre, near Colwyn Bay, are working with regular partners Creative Enterprise on all three which will see them providing housing which uses sophisticated insulation to keep cold out in winter and heat out in summer.
Brenig joint managing director Howard Vaughan said: “It’s very exciting to be involved in such cutting edge projects which will revolutionise construction techniques for the future.
“Passive House buildings allow for heating and cooling related energy savings of up to 90 per cent compared with typical building stock and over 75 per cent compared with average new builds.
“We have in the region of £8 million of these kind of projects on our books and we see this as a way forward for construction with the emphasis on new, green building methods likely to become even more important in future when it will be vital to have these capabilities.”
Brenig currently have a number of active sites across North Wales and are due to start work at six new sites from Conwy to Cheshire in the next six weeks.
Howard Vaughan said: “We locked down immediately after the prime minister’s announcement in March which was the responsible thing to do but that didn’t mean we stopped completely.
“We were still looking for work and we were delighted to pick up a number of new contracts across the public and private sectors and to take on a number of key new staff.
“It has meant that we were able to hit the ground running when we resumed operations and we have remained busy since starting back, so much so that we are starting £14 million of new work in the next two months.”
Their new starts include an affordable housing site in Old Colwyn for Wales and west Housing association, their subsidiary Calon Homes’s first funded scheme outside Wales, at Middlewich, in Cheshire, and further projects in the pipe line for Ewloe, Colwyn Bay and Llandudno.
The Brenig Construction Group is headed by joint managing directors Mark Parry and Howard Vaughan who founded the company in 2012 after working together as civil engineers at Dawnus Construction though they first met as six-year-olds at their local youth club in Glan Conwy in 1987.
They now they head a business that employs 75 staff with a turnover of over £13 million a year with a special interest in modern, eco-friendly and energy efficient building methods and Howard Vaughan added: “We see this as very much the way forward as there has been a directive from Welsh Government to deliver carbon neutral properties by 2025 and for Wales to become carbon neutral by 2050.
“Passive House is something that has in the past usually applied to self-build rather than to the open housing market but we have been very interested in it for some time, particularly for its application in social housing.”
Mark Parry said: “We want North Wales to lead the way in these modern methods of construction and at Brenig we very much want to be part of that.”
In 2018 they moved into new headquarters at the business park in Mochdre which they built for Cartref Conwy with whom they work on a joint venture called Calon Homes with Creating Enterprise, a subsidiary of the housing association.
They are also a growing presence in the housebuilding sector as Brenig Homes and have expertise in civil engineering having just secured a contract for Coleg Menai on their Llangefni Campus, while their portfolio now also includes maintenance, social housing, commercial units and plant hire.
