Dan Gleeson, Sales Director at Schüco UK and Ireland, discusses the increased demand for sustainable façade solutions, and rise in complex refurb projects, making collaboration critical to sucessful delivery.

Why is Schüco attracted to the Irish market?
For Schüco the Irish market holds a lot of potential. It’s an area where we’ve operated for many years, and we have a lot of our loyal, large customers in Ireland. We’re seeing an interest in refurbishment is increasing as well as sustainability, and that’s aligned very much to our carbon control initiative that looks at reducing embodied carbon on a global scale, but also our value up initiative that looks at the refurbishment and remediation of façades.

What challenges do façade companies face?
There are a number of challenges that façade companies face in the modern construction world. I think refurbishment in particular is on the rise but lots of refurbishment projects are challenging. A lot of them require bespoke engineering as aesthetic considerations are more sensitive in a refurb, needing to compliment existing surroundings.

Equally, when you do exploratory works, you might find that the building isn’t quite as expected and that the design needs to be changed on the fly in order to accommodate that. And all of those things take time, they take approvals, and they require input from various engineers and practices. It’s that collaboration that we’re really trying to promote.