Platinum Winner Flynn on the road to success

Well-established as a forward-thinking construction and fit-out company which attracts ambitious and innovative projects, both internationally and at home, Flynn has been in business for two decades and is currently in the process of planning 20th anniversary celebrations to mark the occasion.

With 150 employees working across Ireland, as well as the UK, Germany, Holland and Denmark, and provides construction services to clients within critical environments such as data centres, life sciences, aviation and high value manufacturing facilities, along with building and commercial interiors for blue chip clients both domestic and multinational.

Chief operations officer, Mick Flynn says that the highest quality of workmanship combined with a sustainable outlook, strong customer service and a top-class health and safety record is of utmost importance to the company.

Standards focus

“Our USP is our constant striving for excellence in our health &safety and project execution while also reducing our environmental footprint,” he said. “And we do this while forging strong relationships with our clients, design teams and supply chain partners.”

Alongside maintaining the highest of standards, sustainable growth and turnover are also important and these factors were taken on board when the company decided to engage with the Ireland’s Best Managed Companies Programme — a move which Flynn says has been hugely beneficial.

Significant jump

“We first engaged with the programme in 2016 as, at the time, we recognised that we were about to make a significant jump in turnover and size of organisation, and we had formulated a strategy to manage that growth into something sustainable,” he said.

“We engaged with programme and had two or three sessions with the coaching team who helped us ensure the strategy planning covered all areas — we found that inputs from the team were very helpful and valuable.

“In addition to this, externally there has undoubtedly been recognition from both our clients and prospective staff that by engaging in the programme, we are committed to strong management behaviours, while internally it has given confidence to our staff that we are continually striving to improve and happy to take inputs from external professionals. It also assists us when we are undertaking our business planning process each year.”

Based in Dublin, with offices in Cork, Limerick, London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, the company has been named as a winner at this year’s awards ceremony.

Clear growth period

“It is hard for us to say what made our company stand out, but the feedback at the time was that the judges were impressed with the clear growth period ahead of us and our intention to make sure we were fully prepared and hiring ahead of ourselves,” said Mick Flynn. “There had been a lot of good work done internally on the strategy and the coaching team helped us close out certain areas.

“It probably wasn’t our intention to requalify year after year but the fact that we do, shows that we are getting good value out of it. We also use the process to integrate newer senior staff to understand a wider view of the business and integrate them into the Business Planning and Strategy process.”

Client trust

The business model at Flynn has been built on relationships with clients who trust the company to ‘figure out problems, combining its skills and expertise on-the-ground, with innovative thinking and the latest technologies, ensuring the delivery of optimum results’.

It prides itself on setting up success in the first 5% of any project — and by listening to its partners and clients, identifying and solving for any problems early on, reducing costs, and improving outcomes overall, ensuring each project is set up for success from the start.

The company aims to “work with LEED principles in mind and take any opportunity to implement its extensive knowledge, raising the bar for sustainable construction industry wide”.

“Our record on LEED-accreditation is outstanding, driving us to go further and achieve more.”

Fully commit

Looking towards the future, Flynn aims to continue to “be a leader in the domestic market, building a strong presence in the international market through relationships and solution driven innovative thinking”.

And the chief operations officer would advise other companies who are thinking of applying to the Best Managed Companies programme to try to ensure they get the most from it.

“They should commit fully to the process and take onboard the advice given by the coaching team and attend the events organised through the rest of the year,” he said.

“And for us at Flynn, we hope to continue to grow our business internationally in the critical environments of data centres, pharmaceutical and life sciences. And to deliver a quality and sustainable product to our clients developing our people to their highest potential within a high performing diverse team culture, firmly bound to our fundamental principle of safety always comes first.”