Construction in the North West

Recently appointed to oversee Linear's North West business, Geoff Taylor, our Operations Director (Construction) talks about his introduction to the North West Construction market and his thoughts on how things will develop as we move forward.

Linear Recruitment has been operating in the North West of England since 2014 and has strong ties with a large range of clients across the region. Having recently been appointed to head up the region it has been a real eye opener to see the scale of the opportunity in the region and in particular, the size of one of the main cities, Manchester.

Having taken up weekly trips from Newcastle to Manchester Victoria and the tram across to Old Trafford, the amount of Construction work going on in the ‘Rainy City’ is huge with the skyline-changing schemes such as the projects at Trinity Islands, Embankment Exchange and Pavilion Wharf taking place. It is clear that alongside Leeds, Manchester is helping to create a huge corridor of commerce across the North of England and is becoming a City that can rival any outside of London. 

From my own experiences of travelling through Manchester from Victoria Train Station, it is clearly a vibrant and busy City, significantly larger than Sheffield and Newcastle, where our other Construction-orientated offices are based, and which I oversee.  The Tram network is notably more well-connected than Sheffield’s, and the scale of the buildings makes it feel significantly more developed than other cities in the North, much the same as Leeds. 

It is not just Manchester that is seeing large scale investment; according to Glenigans there are over 40 Apartment/Residential/Flat projects worth in excess of £20m across the North West of England having either recently commenced or which are due to start before the end of 2023, with notable potential schemes at Ordsall Lane in Salford, No.1 Knightsbridge in Stockport and Liverpool Waters Central Docks. 

Outside of the Residential market there are a number of landmark schemes outside of the major cities of Liverpool and Manchester planned, such as the new £100m+ Multimedia centre in Wigan, the already-commenced Talbot Gateway Phase 3 Office scheme in Blackpool, and the Commercial/Educational masterplan in Middlesbrook, Bolton.

With this workload comes the inevitable staffing issues, and in my short time leading the North West team, I have already seen the expected shortfall of candidates with large scale project experience, as well as short-term labour supply challenges. Our project experience across the North West encompasses House Building, large scale High Rise Construction schemes as well as supplying Civil Engineering and Infrastructure projects, and we have a dedicated and reliable candidate base that has grown over our years since we formed our office in Manchester nearly 10 years ago.

We have significant ambitions in our North West operation as we look to enlarge our Trades and Labour Team, as well expanding our Permanent Recruitment and White-Collar Freelance offering and we have already made headway with our growth plans in terms of client reach and internal recruitment. We are investing significantly in the office structure with the aim of becoming a ‘one stop shop’ for our current and future Clients' and Candidates' needs.  

From a personal note, it has been a pleasure to start working with our existing staff in Manchester and I am excited to see how far we can develop the office; within a growing conurbation that is the North West, it is clear we have a great deal of potential to fulfil. 

Finally, we would welcome conversations with clients about how we can offer support on their recruitment strategy, and we would be keen to speak to any ambitious Recruitment Consultants who would be interested in the opportunity to work for a forward thinking, ambitious Employee-Owned business.

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