MAI N FE ATURE
‘ T h e S i s k L i v i n g b u s i n e s s m o d e l i s d i ff e r e n t t o t h a t o f a t r a d i t i o n a l b u i l d e r -d e v e l o p e r ’ FERGAL LALOR, Managing Director, Sisk Living, speaks with Barry McCall about current factors affecting the house-building market and why the Sisk Living business model ideally places it to deliver social and affordable homes.
‘Along with the construction improvement, overlapping could bring the delivery period down to 22 months or a 35% improvement’
Fergal Lalor, Managing Director, Sisk Living.
22 irishconstructionnews May 2021
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isk is one of the best-known names in Irish residential construction. The Sisk company has been building homes and communities for the past five decades, and up until the Covid pandemic, it has been completing some 1,500 residential units every year and making a significant contribution to the state’s social and affordable housing targets in the process. Sisk established Sisk Living over four years ago to focus on low-rise residential projects. “We have a strong bias towards social and affordable housing,” says Sisk Living managing director Fergal Lalor. “We are a contract builder, and we do not expose ourselves to development risk. Our clients are in the main approved housing bodies, local authorities or private-sector providers of social and affordable housing, or private rental sector (PRS). As a contract builder, we are focused on delivering at scale and speed for those clients.”
SISK LIVING BUSINESS MODEL
“The Sisk Living business model is different to that of a traditional builder-developer,” he explains. “Many companies who self-develop deliver at the pace of market absorption,” Lalor explains. “They will build 20 units at a time or whatever suits. We go in and deliver a scheme at scale, whether that’s 80, 100 or 200 units at a time. We are focused on clients who like that approach. That typically suits local authorities, approved housing bodies, private-sector providers and so on. Once the decision is made to move ahead with a development following the design and planning process and other preparatory elements, they want delivery now. It suits our business model to do that.” The pipeline of social and affordable housing is improving at present, with greater visibility into the future as well. “We can see almost 3,000 units in the procurement pipeline at the moment, which we haven’t seen in the past, but as the plan is to build up to 9,000 social and affordable units this year, we still have a way to go,” says Lalor. “There are a variety of projects being brought to the market, such as the Killinarden and Old White Church Road schemes by South Dublin County Council and Cork City Council, respectively, where the developer of the social, affordable and some cases the private scheme are brought
to planning by the economic operator on a licence on state lands,” he adds. “The challenge for a contract builder like ourselves is that when you are waiting for the proverbial bus, they all come along at once.”
HOUSING MARKET TRENDS
There are positive trends in the market as well, with the introduction of a greater mix of tenure types to developments. “We are seeing a good mix of social, affordable, private, and cost rental,” he notes. “From a planning point of view, it is very important for developments to be tenure blind. You shouldn’t be able to distinguish one type from another. The architecture, materials and layout have to be similar throughout. And we are seeing significant effort going into mixing tenure types.” And it’s not just a question of numbers. “You don’t want to end up with one part of a development being exclusively social or private; you want to remove any stigma associated with any tenure type. That’s what we are seeing from a planning point of view now.” There has also been a move to a healthy mix of housing typologies. Fergal Lalor says Sisk Living is seeing a good mix of threebed semis, duplexes, low-rise and mid-rise housing. “In social housing, there is a very concerted effort towards own door access, where you have buildings two, three and four storeys high. Instead of a management company operating lifts and so on, the residents can look after those things themselves.” The company currently has over 450 units under construction. “We had a number of live projects prior to the latest shutdown, and we were pleased to see all of our sites open in April. We see industry challenges with both labour and material supply. However, none of these are particularly surprising, and we have been planning our way through dealing with them.”
MODERN METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
Sisk Living is a strong advocate of modern methods of construction (MMC). “MMC brings much greater speed and efficiency to home building,” says Lalor. “Using offsite fabrication light-gauge steel
