______________________________________________________________________________________________ Century Facades
our policy of reinvesting 70 per cent to 80 per cent of our profits year on year back into the business,” begins Tim.“ At our core is an absolute drive and determination for excellence and innovation, and to achieve this, very early on we embraced what is quite a radical approach in the form of our graduate training programme. We take talented graduates from the best universities and transform them from recently qualified to true professionals.”
“ Our progression platform is about excellence,” echoes Graham.“ We have found that the bedrock of excellence is to bring in very bright young people, with what we describe as‘ curiosity’. We need that curiosity because our industry is changing so quickly, and in an industry that is culturally resistant to change, we need people who are interested in learning about new approaches and not afraid to evolve.”
As well as this recruitment drive, Century has been one of the facade sector market leaders in developing demonstrable competence across the entire business.“ Over the past five years or more, our team has either completed a master’ s degree in facade engineering, or gained Chartership, to ensure that we meet, and often exceed, the required competences that form part of Building Safety Regulator( BSR) regulations,” explains Tim.“ The upskilling of the team has enhanced our technical engineering, which means we can provide robust earlystage advice to our clients, right through to construction stage, including detailed design, engineering, manufacture, and installation.
“ If I look back 15 years, our industry didn’ t particularly value engineering excellence,” Graham admits.“ Few clients cared if staff were chartered and rarely asked to see the CVs of the team. But over the past two-to-three years, there’ s been a dramatic change, and the industry has recognised that demonstrable competence is critical. Not only is this welcome,
Photography © Yunus Özkazanç
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