New man at the top for Highland house builder as Sandy Grant is promoted to the role of managing director of Tulloch Homes following the construction company’s acquisition last week by Springfield Properties
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When he first joined Tulloch Homes back in 2003 Sandy Grant never imagined he would one day be running the firm.
But that is what has now happened after he was announced as the new managing director, following the construction company’s acquisition last week by Springfield Properties.
He replaces long-standing chief executive George Fraser who will be retiring after years at the helm driving the firm’s growth.
The qualified chartered accountant started 18 years ago as Tulloch’s group finance director and has pretty much held that same role until his recent promotion.
He said: “I had worked mainly in the construction industry in the past. I had worked for Morrison Construction Group and for Lilley PLC. Virtually my entire career has been spent in house building and construction.”
His senior management post gave him a seat on the board, allowing him to help steer Tulloch through some challenging times.
He said: “I have pretty much held that same role – apart from the only intervention which was a period as chief operating officer, but that was when we were going through the financial crisis in 2008/9.
“Once we had stabilised the business and reorganised it I went back to being group finance director.”
The 60-year-old lives in North Kessock with wife Maree with whom he has two grown up daughters – 21-year-old Ciara and Holly who is 19 – who both attend university in Edinburgh.
He clearly has faith in his own product – as the family currently lives in a Tulloch home.
“We are in one of our own houses,” he said. “I used to live in Milton of Leys and I am on my third Tulloch house.”
While his career has been somewhat high-flying he regularly worked on sites when he was younger, he said, his own father having been a builder.
“I am an accountant by profession but my father was a builder and I worked on building sites when I was at school and during university holidays,” he said.
“I understand what goes on on a building site from the very lowest level but I trained as an accountant and qualified as a chartered accountant a number of years ago now – it was in the late-80s, I think 1987.”
His appointment as managing director was something that he never imagined would happen.
“No I didn’t,” he insisted. “I never actually thought my journey would be as long as it has been, but you can never really set a path out like that.”
The recent acquisition by Springfield was agreed in a relatively short period of time but it was not the first such approach Tulloch had received.
Mr Grant said: “It has been kind of on and off, you could probably go back 10 years to the first approach Springfield made to Tulloch, but this deal here really has been in discussion in earnest since September of this year. It has been done very, very, quickly.”
Springfield acquired Tulloch for a net consideration of £56.4 million and, while it brought the firm into the Springfield Group, the Tulloch brand will continue.
Mr Grant sees the deal very much as a positive.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for both businesses and I think, particularly for the people in Tulloch, the brand itself is being retained and the people are, I think, within a much larger organisation.
“We will have a good opportunity to grow and develop if they have the ambition to do so.”
It also provides improved stability and security for both businesses, he said, though quickly added “for the record, Tulloch weren’t unstable!”
“We were in very good financial health when this was done but this is the best time to do these deals, when you are in good financial health,” he said.
In contrast, when the deal was announced last week, Inverness-based economist Tony Mackay claimed Tulloch Homes has underperformed in recent years.
Mr Grant, though, defended the firm’s achievements.
“We have delivered a pretty good performance over the past number of years,” he insisted.
“The year to June 2020 inevitably wasn’t in line with previous years but that was put down to the pandemic and I think the shareholders have been pretty happy with the performance of the business, so I would tend to disagree.”
Innes Smith, Springfield’s chief executive, also disagreed with Mr Mackay’s assessment.
“Tulloch has been a really well performing business and the years 2020 and 2021 were both affected by the pandemic so they are not the figures we are buying it on,” he said.
“We are buying it on the underlying landbank and business – we wouldn’t be buying it if it wasn’t a performing business.”
Mr Grant agreed that Tulloch was hit by the pandemic and says: “I think probably like every business it would have faced challenges during the pandemic, probably the greatest challenge we had though was around the financial crisis.
“But we came through the challenges of the pandemic, I think, pretty well, and the market has been pretty robust since lockdown was released back in July 2020, but that is a sectoral thing as opposed to just Tulloch itself.”
As for the future he said: “It is to continue to grow and deliver more quality homes within the Inverness and the Highland area – that would be the long-term strategy.”
Tulloch currently employs a staff of 140, with many hundreds more within its supply chain, and Mr Grant says the business will be run autonomously with the current management structure.
He added: “Innes thinks it has been run reasonably well, so we are going to stick with that.”
On the immediate horizon there are plans to start on building on a couple of more sites within the next six months or so.
“One is in Inverness and one is in the Cairngorm national park.
“So we have a couple of sites in the immediate pipeline but beyond that it’s about the continuation more or less of what we have in Inverness at the moment. We have a significant landbank in the Inverness area so we will continue to develop that out over the next few years.”
Tulloch Homes’ current developments in Inverness include The Maples at Ness Side and Wester Inshes.
