We are a relatively small company for the size and type of contracts we undertake, which enables us to give greater senior management attention to each one. Of the four senior managers, two are generally allocated to each project at the outset and will see it through to the end - no marketing department at the beginning and no claims department at the end. Our business strategy is to work with a small number of repeat clients and this gives the company a clear client focus and a non adversarial partnering approach.

On site, the site managers are long term Sandwood employees, not agency staff, and the work is  undertaken either by our direct labour force or by our partnered subcontractors. It is our direct labour force that allows us to employ the number of apprentices that we do (currently 20% of our work force); it enables us, through apprenticeships, to address the lack of women in construction at site level, and also allows us to explore more efficient ways of working. We are able to introduce cross company working groups, one of which, the Waste Management Working Group, is using the knowledge and experience of our tradespeople, together with managers and office staff, to look at ways of reducing waste on site.