Sun 4 Mar 2007
... with Paul Oldridge
This month, Michael Dineen talks to Paul Oldridge, the man helping McInerney with its UK operations.
They say you are judged by the company you keep, and McInerney that fast-growing Irish invader, chooses to keep company with Paul Oldridge.In fact, they met him through a Leeds-based headhunter who thought the McInerney/Oldridge chemistry would work to everyone's advantage.
And so, I surmised after a visit to Paul's office in Garforth, it seems to be.
In fact, Paul had been looking for a company like McInerney as keenly as they were looking for him.
For Paul likes to be allowed to do deals as part of his remit, and the executives at his employers, Jones Homes, were very little inclined to give him that kind of freedom. Their policy of tight financial control conflicted with Paul's desire to recognise the promise of a parcel of land - perhaps with the added frisson of risk - and then be allowed to take it through to completion: soup to nuts, with nobody hanging over his shoulder to tell him how to hold his Sheffield cutlery.
As it happens, McInerney also enjoys the frisson of deals and it is prepared to support him while briefing him to grow its business in the UK - that is, its business in his bit of the UK; namely most of Yorkshire and Humberside, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and not forgetting offices in such areas of high population as Sunderland and Newcastle.
McInerney, which first set up business in the UK in November 2001, is more broadly based than this, and it is in a strongly acquisitive mood while it establishes itself as a serious contender for top ratings in the UK. It is and has been for many years Ireland's largest housebuilder, with around 1,000 units a year to its credit today - a figure that will be overtaken by its UK company after less than six years in the quest.
At 42, and with executive experience of both large and small housebuilding firms, Paul seemed to me to be thoroughly enjoying his newest challenge.
"After a trial run I decided it was not for me because I wanted to be out on the ground."
So, in the hard-hat world of building sites he acquired quantity surveyor's qualifications. For him surveying meant being able to influence what was happening on site. It was the first intimation that, at the age of 18, perhaps his future lay in management.
His first job was with a Leeds general builder, Jack Lunn. Then came a stint with Barratt, also in Leeds, followed by McAlpine, newly into housebuilding, where he stayed until the big market collapse of the late 1980s.
Now married with children he needed to remain a good provider and so threw in his lot for the first time with a very small outfit, a family firm of housebuilders based in Selby. He was the only surveyor in the company, which led the partners to dub him commercial manager, a title covering all manner of activities, including surveying and buying and also introducing from-scratch systems for costing, purchasing and subcontract management.
"This was when I really got the taste for creating something from nothing. I had the greatest respect for Barratt and McAlpine but they had systems which had been in place for years; you could be taught them in a couple of days and were they mundane!
"Anyway I thought I'd give this little company about 18 months, to tide me over, but I ended up staying for ten years and becoming the managing director."
However the small firm's financial backing was so sketchy and dependent on quick sales to keep the show on the road, that sometimes the dedicated Paul Oldridge found himself using his personal Visa card to buy timber and kitchen equipment - just so that a house could be finished on time.
Unsurprising therefore that he welcomed an approach from the financially sound Emerson Group, whose Jones Homes wing needed a managing director.
Here the daily preoccupation was not with cash, but how to make the cash work harder. Paul spent five years at this while the company increased its net profit by 600 per cent - admittedly in a booming marketplace.
"They naturally wanted the maximum return on their investment, and all went well, but they were, to my mind, risk-averse."
So when McInerney's headhunter approached him he was more than happy, during the negotiations to draw up the business plan they requested - setting out his strategies as managing director, not forgetting his desire to back his own hunches on land development.
The McInerney directors in Dublin approved the plan and they were supportive when one of Paul's contacts came up with a parcel of building land for 67 dwellings - to give him a head start in his new job.
In some ways a typically methodical Yorkshireman, he enjoys his dealings with the informal fast-track can-do approach to business of his colleagues across the water.
But I see a conflict ahead, for we talked of rugger - he still plays in the second row, and coaches his local junior team too - and, on the Friday before the Six Nations contest started, his hunch was that Ireland could emerge as champions at the end of the season. I agreed with him; but that was before we'd seen the Wilkinson comeback, and other good signs in the England XV.
First published in Show House Magazine March 2007.
The greatest care has been taken to ensure accuracy but some information contained within this article may have changed since it was first published.
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