ADVERTORIAL A BRAVE NEW WORLD Matthew Carter, Sales and Marketing Director of H+H, talks turbulence. A


s we gradually emerge from the sheer shock of the last few months there are plenty of people around to focus on how everything has


changed – and of course a great deal has. However, in the middle of a maelstrom of


rapid organisational development remains the fundamental need to build, maintain and improve the housing stock in the UK. My role is very much to concentrate on how we continue to do this in the centre of a turbulent and unpredictable market. And it’s a market in which we see opportunities and causes for optimism as well as caution. Planning, budgeting and setting targets has become a day-by-day challenge rather than a long-term strategy and it would be fair to say that the dramatic rise in demand (as I write, mid-August) caught most of the industry by surprise. No factory can go from zero to 100% output overnight, so demand management is the order of the day for most of us. However, while it would be easy to concentrate purely on immediate supply issues, for a company like H+H, keeping focused on the long term is just as important. Building a sustainable business requires a consistent strategy that weathers even the most extreme volatility. For H+H this strategy focuses on our


core promise of “partners in wallbuilding”. Partnership is about more than simply supplying product, it’s about recognising that our businesses are dependent upon each other and that market forces affect all of us. Right now the focus of demand is for our


standard aircrete blocks and the RMI market has been accelerating rapidly. In the longer term, we will see that changes to Building Regulations will require ever more energy efficient buildings and that government incentives are likely to continue to push the market in the direction of offsite and prefabrication.


Neither of these challenges fazes H+H. We


are comfortable with the proposed changes to Part L of the Building Regulations and can assure our customers that aircrete sits well within the thermal performance likely to be required. We are also absolutely ready with our MMC solutions, allowing housebuilders to continue to use aircrete, with all of its recognised performance, durability and practical advantages, in MMC designs. It will not surprise anyone to hear that H+H passionately believes that new houses should be durable, energy efficient structures that will last for generations and that aircrete has a major role to play in the construction of modern homes. Keeping faith with core values does not mean that our business operation stands still, of course. It has been a revelation to see organisations so resistant to remote working and video conferencing suddenly embrace both. It’s an object lesson in how adversity can stimulate positive as well as negative change. Will all of our relationships now disappear behind screens? Personally I don’t think so. Some conversations need to happen


September 2020 www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net


face to face and it is much more difficult to build relationships of trust without personal interaction. Along with everyone else we have put limits on face to face contact and revised all of our working practices to do as much as we can to keep our staff and customers safe. The result is the development of a whole series of communications tools designed to work online and provide accessible, comprehensive information that we hope will support, rather than replace, our personal relationships. As to future market conditions: the term


uncertainty does not even begin to describe what we are dealing with. However, the Bank of England tells us that UK households are holding record amounts of money in savings and, so far, they seem ready to invest that money in improving their homes, or moving. It would be an optimistic sales director who was counting on all of that enthusiasm continuing, but there is still reason to be much more positive about the next few months than I, for one, would have anticipated three months ago.


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