______________________________________________________________________________________________ Century Facades
Century Facades Ltd( Century) is one of the UK’ s most technically competent combined facade engineering and building facade contractors. Its directors and senior management team bring over 200 years’ combined experience delivering highspecification building envelope projects. Formed in 2012, the company continues to deliver a client- and cost-focused approach to facade design, engineering, and installation.
“ Since we last spoke around a year ago, the business has continued to evolve strategically, particularly in how we position ourselves within the sector and the wider construction market,” begins Tim Lovell, Managing Director.
“ One of the most significant developments has been our expansion into new sectors, particularly the London office refurbishment and repositioning market. Historically, a large proportion of our order book was driven by highrise developments, but with delays linked to the Building Safety Regulator, we made a conscious decision to de-risk the business and broaden our exposure across other areas of the market.
“ These are sectors we already understood technically but hadn’ t previously traded in at scale. That strategic shift has allowed us to reposition ourselves successfully, and we’ ve since secured key London office refurbishment projects.
“ There is a strong push across the sector toward upgrading existing commercial assets to meet modern workplace expectations, sustainability targets, and improved energy performance standards. As a leading facade contractor, this plays directly to our strengths, particularly where schemes involve complex facade replacement, over-cladding, and building envelope enhancement delivered in constrained live environments.
We don’ t just want to meet expectations; we want to exceed them. Sustainability is now central to how we position ourselves in the market
“ These projects also bring multiple layers of complexity. Working with existing structures while introducing entirely new facade systems requires a high level of detailed design coordination. At the same time, because these buildings are in London, there is still a strong architectural ambition to create visually striking developments, which adds further technical and aesthetic challenges to the facade design and delivery process.”
Sustainability has become an increasingly important driver of both client decisionmaking and Century’ s internal strategy. A key focus is reducing embodied carbon within facade design and delivery. This includes working closely with clients, consultants, and supply-chain partners to optimise material selection, increase opportunities for reuse and retention where feasible, improve manufacturing efficiency, and develop facade solutions that reduce whole-life carbon impact while maintaining demanding aesthetic and performance requirements.
“ We recognise that we have a responsibility to help protect the future,” says Tim.“ A major opportunity lies in increasing the use of recycled materials, particularly aluminium.
“ As a business, we made a commitment to achieve Net Zero by 2030, and we recognised early on that this couldn’ t be achieved in isolation. It requires full buy-in across the supply chain. We’ ve worked closely with our partners to understand not only what we can improve internally, but also what they are doing in terms of their own decarbonisation journeys and Scope 3 commitments.
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