ROD Director and Company Secretary, Jim Thorpe.
Having successfully delivered a wide range of projects in the UK when work was scarce at home, Roughan & O'Donovan (ROD) decided in 2017, due to the uncertainty of Brexit, to start making plans to secure continued access to the UK market.
Roughan & O’Donovan UK Ltd was formally registered as a wholly owned subsidiary of Roughan & O’Donovan Ltd. in September 2018, and our UK-based site staff have since transferred their contracts of employment to the new company.
With Northern Ireland successfully served from our Dublin office at present, the location of our UK office was dictated by the need for both a central base to serve England, Scotland and Wales, and quick and convenient links to Dublin.
We settled on Otley, on the edge of Leeds in Northern England, which is four miles from Leeds-Bradford airport and just 20 minutes by train to the centre of Leeds and the UK national rail network.
We signed an initial five-year lease on the top floor of the refurbished woollen mill, Wharfebank Mill, which has been converted into a thriving office complex and business community, occupied by 40 separate businesses covering a wide range of professional and business support services.
The new office is equipped for 18 staff, with a video conference equipped conference room and seamless IT integration with the two Dublin offices, such that everyone will be working off the same servers and Michelle will be able to take and allocate phone calls across all three offices.
The office overlooks the banks of the River Wharfe, which makes it the perfect location for a lunchtime stroll. It also offers easy access to Otley town centre.
I have relocated to the Leeds area to head up the new office while remaining a director and company secretary of both ROD and RODUK. The proximity to the airport means that I will remain available to Irish clients, while coordinating staff across the three offices as best suits the needs of each individual project, wherever the client is based.
My initial plan is to be in Ireland 25% of the time.
