P EOPLE
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Garry Martin The SAPCA vice chair and CEO of Replay Maintenance speaks to SportsNation about his two roles.
Could you outline your personal career journey to date?
So what does Replay Maintenance do?
I’ve been involved in construction for most of
company and work on all types of
my life and entered the sports construction
synthetic sports surfaces – from playing
sector in the early 2000s when I joined Charles
fields and pitches of all generations (2G,
Lawrence Surfaces (CLS) as a contracts
3G) to athletics tracks and the like.
As the name suggests, we’re a maintenance
We work on a repeat model, so we want
manager. Replay Maintenance existed at that point as a division of CLS, but for various
to see the sites we work on more than
reasons wasn’t a huge financial success.
once a year. Often that means signing a service agreement and visiting a facility
Within two years of joining CLS, I became
six times (or more) a year. We currently
more involved with the work Replay did, predominantly visiting and assessing the projects the team completed and to make sure the work had been undertaken to the right quality and standards. It was then that I identified the potential of the business and how to grow it. That led me to gradually move away from the contracts management side and by 2004 my main role had developed into being Replay’s operations manager. Together with Sue Baker – who is still with the business today – we worked very hard at growing the business and began winning some sizeable contracts, eventually making it a success. At the time, Replay
Replay offers both service agreements and one-off processes
was a limited business wholly owned by Charles Lawrence himself, alongside some other individuals. Due to the potential of the business, I was keen to get on the ownership ladder, so over the following years I bought myself in and eventually became the largest shareholder in the company. Today, Replay has 25 field operatives, 23 members of staff and is arguably the largest company of its kind in the UK – and
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sportsnation.org.uk JUL/AUG 2022
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there is also a Replay Maintenance USA.
