Mark engineers the basis for a successful business

MPB Ltd has proven successful for Mark Bennett in the last few years and after being handed some major developments around Dublin, his company continues to grow writes Cian O Raghallaigh.

MPB Ltd is not well-established as a civil engineering and groundwork contracting company

After a number of years in the engineering business, Mark Bennett continues to thrive in his role as managing director of MPB Ltd, the civil engineering and groundwork contracting company. Beginning the work may have been difficult but now that the firm is established he can look back contentedly that the firm continues to be a resounding success, serving those in the surrounding Louth, Cavan and Dublin area well. With another nine people working for the company alongside him, there is good reason to believe that the company can continue to go from strength to strength.

Mark Bennett's roots may lie in the Orchard county (he comes from a place called Cloughouge, Co. Armagh) but his own civil and ground work contractors company is thriving in Louth since Mark set it up. MPB Ltd specialises in site clearance, drainage, concrete work, paving and landscaping. Mark decided to locate his firm in the company headquarters in county Louth.
"I set up the business six years ago this March. The company has its headquarters in Dunleer, Annagassan, Co. Louth. At the moment we have ten men who are involved in pipe-laying, concreting and labouring. We start off by doing ground works, then we move onto the site, then we strip the site and then we do the drainage work and the sewers.
"Recently we finished the first phase of the Fatima Mansions; we did all the ground work, drainage work, kerbing and the bricklaying. We were working on that for a year and a half," he says.

The company's specicalist work includes drainage work and concrete work

Mark continues to keep a close eye on all the important health and safety regulations which companies need. Communication between people has become of the utmost importance in this line of work and rather than put the work first, the safety of people has become of paramount importance.
In a speech in July, 2005, Minister for State Tony Killeen said that in 2004, 50 people died in workplace accidents with another 8,052 people injured. Safety, he maintained, reduced costs and increased profitability. He also highlighted how essential it was to maintain safety.

"If you think safety is expensive, try an accident. In today's workplace, a safety culture is not an optional strategy, which we may or may not choose to pursue but, rather, it is a business imperative, which no company can afford to leave unmanaged," he said.
Mark ensures that his company is constantly kept up to date on health and safety work. Each week he ensures that people co-operate with each other to lessen the risk of accidents. Contractors are also reassured that everything will be done correctly.
"We make sure that we're going to do everything right and that safety comes first before the work. All the men are well briefed that they are not, for example, walking behind machines," he says.

The company's headquarters are based in County Louth

At the moment the company's main project is in Santry in Dublin. Working in the Northwood area of Santry, MPB Ltd is working on the groundworks for the office units. The firm is involved in installing the concrete floors as well as the pipe work, the mains and the gas for the units. (It is in Northwood that the Dunne family, Mark and his father Ben, will open a third fitness centre. Located in Dublin 9, only four miles from the city centre and a mile from Dublin airport and the Dublin Port Tunnel, the area is close to the M50 and M1).

Elliots is his main contractor at the moment. The company took some time to evolve but for Mark, it meant simply buying his own machine and starting to do his own work. When he started there were days when he needed to work fourteen or fifteen hours a day but he maintains that it proved worthwhile in the end. Over the last few years he got himself into a position to build up the company and recruited more men to work for him. At the moment he is the man in charge though his father Pat gave invaluable support to the company when he worked for them.

Most of the time he tries to base himself around Louth, Dublin and Cavan. In future he would like to have some more men working for him. Despite the pressures involved in work, he tries to finish his work in the space of five days and the majority of operations, he says, have run smoothly so far. With a network of contacts now built up in the area, he is in a good position to be able to recruit more people for expansion. At the moment he is content that the company is running smoothly. The work is continuing to build for him and given that he is now talking about recruiting more people to his business, things are looking good for him.