TOM GLEESON: PROUD TO BE IN PLANT

Tom Gleeson joined Clancy Plant in March 2021 as Plant Director, a role he says “is so fulfilling and enjoyable” working in a “wonderful industry with some great people”. Tom’s name will be familiar to many in the industry having worked in it for over 30 years. Having grown up in the small seaside town of Youghal in County Cork, it was agriculture that dominated his younger years. Tom’s father was an agricultural mechanic, and he fondly remembers spending a lot of time with him, taking a keen interest in equipment from those early years. But it was a visit to London at the age of 18 that was to change Tom’s life.

“I originally planned to be in London for my summer holidays but ended up staying. Dad passed away when I was 19 and there wasn’t quite the same draw to go back to Cork after that,” reflects Tom, who goes on to explain that his father was only 50 when he passed.

Tom’s first “office job” was with a company called C J Pearce in 1989, at the time when Canary Wharf was being developed. He then progressed to Balfour Beatty as a Junior Office Manager where he settled for the next few years. His first foray in “procurement” was when the Jubilee Line extension was underway. This involvement with buying for the Jubilee Line construction project was significant to Tom. It took him on a path to Mowlem where he started as a Senior Buyer for Civil Engineering. That was in 1997.

“It was a wonderful business, and we had a fabulous team,” smiles Tom. “The Civil Engineering division, at that time, turned over in the region of £500 million giving our team in Bracknell significant spending power for a wide range of materials, services, plant and equipment. We were involved in some incredible projects at Mowlem, from construction of the A2/M2 crossing to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link at St Pancras, the Lewisham extension and part of the M25.” →

Mowlem also worked on the construction of Dublin Port Tunnel, which took Tom back to his Irish roots for a year, as part of the Major Projects Civils Team.

“Strangely enough, I have only ever had one year in my career working in Ireland. It was great fun out there but after I’d finished my 12-month stint in Dublin for Mowlem, I was ready to come back to Head Office in the UK. I really do consider the UK to be home.”

During his 10 years at Mowlem, Tom was promoted and ultimately landed the role of Procurement Manager, leading the procurement team in Bracknell. He still keeps in touch with his ex-colleagues, who he sees socially. Mowlem was bought by Carillion in 2006.

‘Home’ for Tom is a village in Wiltshire on Salisbury Plain which he “absolutely loves”. Tom met his wife, Sophie, during his time in London, and they married in 1996 before moving to Wiltshire 19 years ago.

Not long after Carillion acquired Mowlem, Tom thought the time was right to make a change. In 2007, he was verbally offered a position at Costain, but fate intervened, and Tom took a different course during a dinner with

Steve Corcoran, then Chief Executive of Speedy Hire.

“It was a bizarre turn of events. The offer letter from Costain got delayed in the post and in some ways, I think it was fate. I was out to dinner with Steve (Corcoran) who I’d known for a long time, and I mentioned that I was going to leave Carillion to join Costain. He asked if I had signed a contract (I hadn’t) and then suggested I came to work for Speedy, giving me the option of three different roles to ‘choose’ from. The letter from Costain didn’t turn up for 10 days because it didn’t have any postage on! I’d been mulling this over during this time, and decided to join Speedy.”

Tom took on the role of Business Improvement Director for Speedy’s Accommodation business because Steve wanted a “fresh pair of eyes” on the business to improve its performance and ratify its strategic position.

“It became clear this wasn’t a core area for Speedy. At the time, Elliott UK was in ascendency, so the decision was made to sell Speedy’s Accommodation business to them.”

“Around 2009, Steve asked me to set-up the Partnered Services side of the Speedy business. He realised that there were inconsistencies in service levels across the depots, and wanted me to establish a centralised team to take control. The aim was to ultimately offer a consistent service to customers, which we successfully achieved. We negotiated contracts with suppliers and we took that part of the Speedy business from 8 million to 23 million in three years.”

And then came the advent of One Call, which merged with Fork Rent to become Ardent Hire Solutions as it is known today. Tom, in 2013, joined One Call Hire Ltd as Commercial & Sales Director. He had been brought in to try and “polish some of the edges” to implement change, especially to improve how the business presented itself to customers. Tom ran the sales and commercial function, and also took the procurement element under his wing. He introduced changes so they could report better, and constructively attain client data.

“One Call was a successful business and they quite rightly identified that some things could be done better. I was concentrating on this, when Steve Corcoran popped up again and told me about his plans with PE backing to buy the business, together with Fork Rent, with a vision to merge both companies.

“He asked me to form part of the management buy-in team. So, I became Commercial Director when we acquired that business. Then, of course, under Steve’s leadership the two businesses were merged to become Ardent Hire Solutions Ltd, and I transitioned with it, to become Commercial Director for that company in August 2015.”

Along the way, Tom started to realise that it didn’t have the same ‘family feel’ that he desired, and after three years, decided to step away from Ardent.

Unsure of what he wanted to do next, and not seeing any jobs that truly interested him, Tom took the decision to start his own venture. So, he set-up Capel Machinery (named after a small island off the coast of Youghal Bay) and started buying and selling equipment.

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At the time, SANY was trying to get a foothold in the UK market, which was timely for Tom, in securing the dealership for the Gloucester, Wiltshire and Oxford areas.

“I was happy being involved in Capel Machinery. It suited me at the time and we developed a successful platform. But, then after 2 years, the Plant Director position opportunity at Clancy came my way, which was not only an exciting prospect but also a real privilege. I knew it would be such a great role, so I made the decision to step away from the dayto-day running of the Capel business and accept the Clancy offer.” Tom’s wife, Sophie, has remained with Capel and Eamonn McGurk of McGurk Group has an active shareholding. “I joined Clancy Plant in March 2021 and I haven’t looked back.”

Two years on, and Tom is sitting behind his desk in his office at Clancy’s Clare House headquarters in Harefield with a contented aura about him that feels ‘very at home’. He agrees and is full of praise for the Clancy family and the business they have so successfully grown to what it is today.

“Clancy is a great family business, and I’m a real family man, so from day one, there was an instant connection and a shared set of values. My eldest son has joined the business as well and is on track to becoming a fully qualified accountant. We have fathers and daughters working here, sisters, brothers, partners and cousins! It is a real testament to the business that they embrace, and enjoy people coming here and working with their families. Clancy management is now on the third generation of Clancy family members, and this ‘family ethos’ flows throughout the Group, to create a tight unit.”

We talk briefly about the Clancy Foundation, which is very proactive within the industry, and in supporting local causes and community projects. Tom feels this “adds to that family and community spirit”. Clancy’s Golf Day last year raised around £30,000 for the Lighthouse Club, for which they are huge supporters. They also took part in the Plant Hire Aid Alliance for Ukraine as part of a convoy to Slovakia.

Clancy is one of the largest privately owned construction businesses in the UK. With a long a successful heritage, it was originally founded in 1958 by Michael Clancy as M.J. Clancy & Sons Limited operating from premises in Wembley. The original business started in civil engineering work and has grown to become a leading partner in utilities, delivering water, wastewater, energy and telecoms work across the UK, as well as endto-end traffic management solutions. Clancy’s capabilities are vast, from fixing water leaks to cross country pipelines, as well as all manner of construction projects from substation builds to enabling works on HS2.

The Clancy Group has just won a multi-million-pound contract with Gigaclear to deliver a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network upgrade to approximately 7,000 properties across Surrey. It’s Clancy’s first major contract award in the telecoms sector.

“The telecoms division is new, so we are investing in a range of different equipment, such as poling rigs mounted on a lorry chassis, with an augur and crane for handling telegraph poles. We also have 4x4 mobile elevated work platforms which we have a lot of experience in through our power contracts.”

Clancy has an impressive client portfolio, partnering on important contracts for the most prominent names that include Scottish Water, Anglian Water, Southern Water, SE Water, SES Water, Thames Water, Northern Powergrid, UK Power Networks, HS2 (for utilities diversion and other projects). These are just some names from a long list. So, what about the Plant side of the business for which Tom has responsibility? Tom describes it as “a very busy place”. Clancy Plant was formed in 1962 “with the sole purpose to provide all plant and transport requirements to the Clancy Group.” It’s not hard to see why Tom says this division of Clancy is so busy.

Today, Clancy Group directly employs over 2100 people across 4 regional hubs and operational units delivering utilities and civils projects and maintenance. Kevin Clancy is Chairman and his nephews, Matt Cannon is CEO, while Ronan Clancy (Dermot Clancy’s son) is also an Executive Director. Sadly, Dermot passed away in a tragic accident in 2019.

“It is great that Clancy still have a strong passion to continue owning and operating our own plant and transport. We have 2500 vehicles and 10,000 items of plant, including a range of specialist equipment, such as suction excavators, pipe welding, cable detection and associated tooling.”

In relation to buying equipment, Tom is quick to stress how committed Clancy is to supporting projects pointing out that the company ethos is, “if we’re going into a sector, we’ll go in seriously.”

“There is continuous investment in Capex here, and our meetings are really straightforward, with a small committee making decisions quickly. Our clients understand this, and they like the relationships we have got with suppliers, and people in the industry in general. So, we continue to buy. We encourage our people to bring clients to Clancy Plant to show them around, so they can meet the team, look at what we do and the volume of work we conduct, and the value we bring to projects.”

Expanding on what he means by ‘value’, Tom continues: “The value isn’t necessarily about having a piece of steel that can do the job. It can go beyond that. We show customers how innovative we are, and how we can modify equipment to suit the contract’s particular requirements. We get a lot of repeat business because we focus on making the client experience an excellent one.”

Tom goes on to explain that there are challenges too, faced by the wider industry, especially around sustainability.

“Sustainability is high on our agenda. We aspire to move faster towards electric, and we run EVs and continue to trial electric vans, but the infrastructure just isn’t there yet for mass rollout. One of the challenges is that the vans are often taken home overnight, and regularly operate fully laden. So EV charging is an issue. We launched our electric car policy last year, and we’ve got more lined up to enter the fleet. “

Tom expands further. He says that Clancy Plant is also trialling eco-welfare units, and they have already invested in solar pods, to generate power to offices. They also have some battery powered excavators but again, fast and efficient charging remains an obstacle, with cold weather impacting battery life.

“The problem is also battery weight. Even the battery handheld tools, such as road breakers and saws, have heavy batteries which make handling them more difficult. I think technology needs to try and outpace where we are now because now, I don’t think it’s even keeping up.”

He adds: “I don’t believe that electric is the solution for large excavators in its current format. They have a duty cycle of 8 hours, but our duty cycle is longer than that. When you factor in charging time too of perhaps 12 to 14 hours, and the cost of the machine, which is often around 4 times as much as its conventional counterpart, then it doesn’t add up. We need manufacturers to give us more solutions that are scalable and allow us to repower quickly.”

“I was impressed at what JCB are doing with the hydrogen engine, but there is still an infrastructure challenge, around where to store, transport and get clean hydrogen.”

He also says that, while moving to electric is high on the agenda, that it’s also about smarter and safer ways of working.

“We have got a large fleet of vacuum excavators. For us as a contractor, one of the major risks is striking cables or other services when digging holes. The vacuum excavators remove that risk, so they present a different and safer way of working.”

Another area of the business that is being closely evaluated by Clancy Group, is the use of the data. Tom explains further.

“There’s a lot of data available from telematics, manufacturers engine management and mileage, and so on. We are engaged in a project that will help us use data metrics far better, not only in managing and maintaining vehicles, but also from a sustainability perspective. With 2500 vehicles, our fuel bill is enormous! So, we are talking about changing behaviours, such as idling times, route planning and so on, and to capture data that can ultimately help us to become more efficient. It will have a big impact on fuel consumption.”

Beyond plant and equipment, there are of course, people. Tom also says that customers like Clancy’s ‘direct employ’ model. The company takes a 70:30 approach with the majority of people directly employed, which Tom says, “works very well”.

But another key challenge is attracting younger people into the industry, and more importantly, retaining them. This is a problem that is endemic throughout the construction sector, not just plant rental, and one the entire industry is having to address.

“It’s such a shame because it is a very enjoyable industry to be part of. I’ve been in this industry for over 30 years, and it is a great sector to work in, with some excellent opportunities for career progression. For the right people, there are some amazing opportunities at Clancy, including apprenticeships, with much to offer all types of career paths for the future. We have a stable team, and we want young people to stay with us.”

And talking to Tom, his love of the industry, and for the job he does, is very apparent. He laughs when he says that his ‘work persona’ can be quite different to the family man he is at home. “I have a reputation in the industry for being ‘difficult’ at times, but away from it all, I’m just a family guy!”

Married to Sophie, with three sons, he says: “I love my family; we have had a full house with the boys and at times their girlfriends, and it’s great. I enjoy cooking (some may have seen Tom’s famous pizza oven!) entertaining friends and listening to music. And I adore walking in the beautiful Wiltshire countryside.”

Tom is also keen on horseracing and tells me for a while he ‘owned a piece of a horse’, saying that “it is always a great day out.” The Gleeson family aptly live in a horseracing village in the same vicinity as trainer, Richard Hannon. And when time permits, Tom also enjoys his motorbike and playing golf. He and Sophie are very keen on travelling, fondly saying how they “enjoy each other’s company”.

As we round-up our interview, I am struck by Tom’s warm and caring side, and above all the genuine pleasure he gets from “working in plant” and especially “working at Clancy”.