With a heritage that dates back to 1868, Glasgow-based Thomas Johnstone has enjoyed longevity that many companies can only dream of. Construction Industry News recently caught up with Rod Young, Joint Managing Director, to see how the business, which is committed to delivering the highest quality fit-out, manufacturing and building solutions, has thrived for over a century and a half.
“The key has been all about our ability to deliver for our clients, on time and to budget, to keep repeat business coming through,” explains Mr Young. “This is only possible due to the people we have, which our clients have the utmost confidence in. They are absolutely essential.”
With over 200 people employed across their Inchinnan and Edinburgh bases, Thomas Johnstone collectively brings many years of expertise to its projects. It empowers the team to listen to, understand and respond to customers’ needs, fostering long-term, mutually beneficial relationships.
“Our people have excellent knowledge of the business and a strong understanding of how we want them to portray the business,” adds Mr Young. “A great deal of in-house training underpins this, covering health & safety, management and presentation.”
This commitment to its employees has not only led to a highly trained workforce but has also resulted in extremely loyal staff. Around 45 per cent of its workforce have been with the company for ten or more years.
“When people join us they tend to stay, primarily because of how we treat them,” points out Mr Young. “It’s a real family-feel we’ve been able to develop within the company. At a time when there’s such a shortage of labour in the wider market, being able to hold onto our good staff has been invaluable as replacing them wouldn’t be easy.”
Thomas Johnstone also has a well-developed apprenticeship scheme and currently has 26 apprentices on its books, spread across its various sites and factory. “We offer various courses in order to continually train our people. We have committed to having five per cent of our staff on a training apprenticeship or vocational degree. We’re comfortably meeting criteria at the moment. Our policy is to bring people through the business and develop them to their full potential by training and promoting from within.”
The other major challenge that Thomas Johnstone has had to contend with is rising materials prices but having strong relationships with its suppliers has helped greatly with this. It also has robust links with its family of sub-contractors, as it strives to be a fair and reliable payer.
While strong traditional values have been integral to the Thomas Johnstone story over the years, the company also continues to have one eye firmly on the future, as Mr Young highlights: “We can’t stand still and, as they say, you’re only as good as your last job, which is very true. We’re therefore continually looking to improve. One of our longer-term goals is to reduce our carbon footprint. We’re currently investing £200,000 in solar panels for our factory, which will save us money in the long run and support our drive to reducing our carbon footprint. We’ve also changed all the lighting within the factory to LEDs and have installed a more economical heating system. They have the dual benefit of assisting the company and the environment.
“Aside from improving sustainably, our main objective is to continue to be a company that people want to both work for and want to work with. If we achieve this, then everything else falls into place. It’s all about listening to our clients and our people and responding to their requirements, rather than just giving them what we think they need.
“The key factors to our success are enshrined in our four core values: people, integrity, total customer focus and continuous improvement. Our people always come first and foremost and are at the top of our agenda.”
This approach is working well for the business, underlined by the fact that it recently redeveloped the India Buildings in Edinburgh to create the award-winning Virgin Hotel. The project brought the first of Sir Richard Branson’s hotels to the UK and involved carefully refurbishing a mixture of Listed Buildings on a tight site within the UNESCO Edinburgh Old and New Towns World Heritage Site. As well as restoration and refurbishment, the project included the construction of a new build wing occupying a tight position that maximised the site location. The project has won both Architectural awards and several awards in the hospitality sector: making it the place to be in Edinburgh. Thomas Johnstone also remains proactive within the commercial office, hospitality and leisure, golf clubs, industrial, education and healthcare sectors.
Few competitors have the same ability to deliver in-house manufacturing to the same complexity and scale as Thomas Johnstone, which sets it apart from the competition. Its ambitions for the future are to remain the fit-out and main contractor of choice for high-quality projects and continue to deliver excellence for its clients. It hopes to achieve this through a continued focus on staff retention, continued investment in developing talent, and providing an excellent apprenticeship scheme. Given the success it has achieved already, this formula looks set to continue working for many years yet.