Learn how employee engagement and a people-first philosophy are central to The Casey Group’s longevity and success
From high rise blocks to new build homes, The Casey Group is the multi-disciplinary solutions provider that can deliver it all. Founded in 1968 by Chairman, Peter Casey, the company specialises in residential development, construction and refurbishment, along with infrastructure projects, operating across a variety of market sectors including housing, education, healthcare, public realm, highways, and civil engineering, whilst providing market-leading plant hire services. The Casey Group leverages a highly skilled direct trades workforce and encompasses a number of divisions within its subsidiary companies – each augmenting the Group’s scope of capabilities with its own value-added construction and civil engineering services.
Aside from its impressive portfolio and comprehensive solutions, however, what differentiates The Casey Group is its unique purpose of ‘Improving Lives’ – a philosophy that lies deep within the beating heart of the company. Whether it’s building safe, comfortable homes, creating environments for communities to thrive or ensuring a supportive, empowering environment for its employees, The Casey Group is passionate about making a real difference.
Construction & Civil Engineering sits down with Chris Casey, Chief Executive Officer, and Paul Byrne, Chief Operating Officer, to discuss how the company’s people-powered ethos continues to build better lives for all. Beginning our conversation, Chris provides some insight into the history and principles that define The Casey Group.
“The Casey Group is a second generation family business. My father founded the first of The Casey Group companies in 1968, and we’ve since worked in a number of different sectors over the years, all with the purpose of improving lives, and with a commitment to social value and community impact,” he shares. “We’re very much a values-led business. It’s important to us that we champion our values and create a workplace where our employees can thrive. Wellbeing is very important to us as an employer, and we have numerous initiatives centred around this. We’ve held wellbeing days offsite, we’ve hosted several speakers who’ve provided mental health advice and offered support in other areas such as diabetes, nutrition and sleep. It’s an area on which we focus a lot of support.”
The Casey Group’s solutions are centred around creating a positive impact and, in that regard, the company boasts a successful track record. The business conducts all of its projects respectfully and with both sustainability and quality of life in mind, making it a preferred partner across multiple markets and disciplines. In particular, in light of the recent changes in legislation and building standards within the UK construction sector, building safety and sustainability are two major focuses.
“Our largest presence is in supporting the social housing sector, including new build housing and social housing refurbishment. For the last few years, we have leant heavily into fire safety improvement and building safety works. We’ve worked on over 50 tower blocks in the last few years, providing complete remediation – from recladding through to the installation of ground source heat pumps and other sustainable technologies – all with a real focus on building safety,” Paul explains. “Our passion to help drive real cultural change in this area led to us being recognised as one of the first organisations in the UK to achieve the Building a Safer Future Champion status. In addition, we opened our Casey Building Safety & Skills Academy in October 2022, which offers a great environment where we can help educate our own employees, as well as our clients and supply chain partners, on building safety. The education is split across academic disciplines, including theory and knowledge of legal regulations, as well as best practices, and practical skills. For example, people can attempt a fire door installation to gain valuable practical skills.
“Aside from that, though still within the remit of social housing refurbishment, we also do a lot of energy efficiency and decarbonisation work. We carry out building conservation and heritage restoration works, whole house maintenance and full estate regeneration. Within that area, we’ve worked on over 25,000 homes in the last 30 years.”
All these projects are delivered in line with The Casey Group’s values, which have recently been refreshed and relaunched. While the group has always had core principles in place, it has recently refined its fundamentals down to six concise company values to further inspire its vision of improving lives.
“While our company values have always expressed care and respect, we’ve taken the opportunity to build on those pillars. We’ve got six values: Do The Right Thing, Embrace Ownership, Pursue Growth, Play The Long Game, Be Collaborative, and Help and Support,” Chris explains.
“‘Do The Right Thing’ is about acting ethically and with respect, being consistent and speaking out when things aren’t right. ‘Ownership’ is about taking responsibility and being accountable, looking inwards, not outwards. ‘Pursue Growth’ refers to both personal and organisational growth in the sense that we want to be a little bit better every day. ‘Play The Long Game’ is about building trust and having strong relationships, thinking about how everything we do will impact us in the long term. It’s about staying in business and providing jobs for everyone for the future. ‘Be Collaborative’ focuses on listening and welcoming diversity of thought, working together and encouraging others to thrive in a positive and fun environment. Lastly, ‘Help and Support’ is about looking after your team mates, contributing to a positive social environment and being a force for good.”
Aligning with its value-centred approach, The Casey Group has taken on a number of exciting development projects, all with the vision to create more pleasing spaces for people within its local communities. For instance, the Group has recently secured a sizable contract for the redevelopment of Ashton’s Market Square. Working in collaboration with Tameside Council, the project will see a complete transformation of the market square. The Casey Group will be reconstructing the square’s canopy and area beneath, with architectural manufacturer, Whitecrate, providing the new kiosks. The project will offer Ashton’s Market Square an essential refresh, creating a vibrant, attractive place for the public to enjoy.
“We’re really proud to be involved with this project, along with the wider team; it’s a great scheme. The project has been funded by a combination of levelling-up funding and contributions from Tameside Council, and it aims to create a vibrant and welcoming space for the community while supporting local traders and providing a venue for events and other cultural activities. It’s been a great privilege to be on site. We’ve been through a very extensive value engineering exercise to help us maintain the spectacular look and feel of the project whilst meeting the clients’ expectations on cost,” Paul says. “A few weeks ago, we were very proud to welcome the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, for a site visit. It’s always great to be involved in schemes that make a real difference to the community; it aligns very well with our purpose.”
Similarly, another recent project that had a major impact on its local community was The Casey Group’s award-winning Winstanley House project. “This project was an affordable housing apartment scheme for one of our valued clients, involving a full design and build scheme,” Paul continues. “We built 28 much-needed affordable homes in the area and, again, we carried out a significant value engineering exercise. One of the challenges of this project was meeting the energy efficiency requirements on a fairly complex build, driven by the new building regulations that had recently come into effect. We learned a lot in a short space of time and it was a great project to be involved in.”
The Casey Group’s community engagement doesn’t end with project completion, however. The company invests an incredible amount of time and money into its CSR initiatives, supporting a plethora of fantastic causes both externally and internally with its charitable ‘Improving Lives Fund’.
“One of the great benefits of working with the clients we do is a genuine alignment of values, and particularly so, in terms of social impact, and we’ve now created a vehicle to deliver that in an even better way. In the last couple of years, we’ve launched the Improving Lives Fund. The fund provides a new way to deliver positive social impact consistently and at a high level across the board. All of the divisions within our business pay a contribution into a pot of money that’s managed centrally by The Casey Group, and we’ve spent just over £700,000 on good causes in the last 12 months,” Paul affirms. “Within this, for example, we’ve worked with great charities such as Mustard Tree, a homeless charity in Manchester, making donations and creating opportunities to take on full-time employees who were experiencing homelessness. Recently, we also participated in Cracking Good Foods’ Carnival COOK-up at Freight Island in Manchester, which brought together businesses and volunteers to prepare over 1700 meals for people experiencing homelessness across the city.”
In addition, The Casey Group is also dedicated to supporting the next generation of construction workers and inspiring young people with its various educational programmes and initiatives.
“We take on multiple apprentices each year in a range of roles across the business; it’s something in which we invest heavily. We have a dedicated team to manage apprentices to ensure they get the best possible experience. We also partner with schools, colleges and training providers to offer students hands-on experience, whether in the form of site visits, workshop visits, mentoring programmes, or work experience,” Paul adds. “Our educational programmes are all about demystifying the construction industry and showcasing the diverse career opportunities that are available.”
With lots more exciting projects and frameworks on the horizon, the future shines brightly for The Casey Group. The company’s stellar reputation for value-led project execution keeps the business in high demand as it continues to impress clients across the North. In addition to successful project delivery, The Casey Group is also overseeing internal developments, focusing on people management and employee engagement.
“We’ve recently partnered with Gallup to really understand employee engagement within The Casey Group, and from that, we’ve set some quite ambitious targets for the next ten years,” Paul says. “This is recognising, from all the studies Gallup has done, that engaged employees are four times more likely to thrive in life, both within work and outside. Businesses with a higher number of engaged employees have a 60 per cent increase in wellbeing and a 64 per cent reduction in safety incidents – there’s so many great metrics surrounding employee engagement.
“This initiative is about building on our ‘Investors In People’ gold accreditation and taking it to the next level. We’ve just completed our first administration with Gallup, where we surveyed everybody in the business to assess our current levels of engagement. We’ve had some great feedback on that and it’s given us some areas to build on over the next few years.”
Looking further ahead, Chris reveals The Casey Group’s priorities for the coming years. “We have some ten-year aspirations. We’re looking at further developing the Improving Lives Fund and implementing a more robust structure, perhaps turning it into a foundation-type organisation to really legitimise its position,” he highlights.
“As discussed, we’re going to really lean into our engagement targets. Both the construction industry, and the UK as a whole, score quite low in employee engagement, so we’ve decided that we want to aim to be in the top quarter percentile of engagement throughout any industry in any country. We’re also very much embarking on our AI journey and exploring how we can use it to the benefit of our customers and clients, particularly in terms of finding better carbon reduction solutions.”
Leading at the forefront of UK construction excellence, The Casey Group continues to prove that it’s a company with a difference. Despite current industry challenges, the business continues to thrive and prosper, remaining well-positioned for a successful future. Whatever the next chapter holds, however, one thing will always remain constant, and that is the trail of positive impact that The Casey Group leaves with every project, improving the lives of its employees, its clients and communities.