Alumni Story: Apprentice to Director and Founder (Greendale Construction)

Thirty -four years ago, Chris Kane founded Greendale Construction Ltd. Looking back, Chris would never have thought he would be working on projects for the Queen, with the likes of Windsor and the Natural History Museum. “If you’d have told me I would be working for the then Queen, I would have been like – ‘Happy days!”’

Construction runs in Chris’s family. His grandfather was a painter and decorator and his dad worked in a paint factory in Manchester. They then moved down to Dorset and had a paint workshop. Chris’s mother suggested he try Construction at Bournemouth and Poole College after reading a college handout about an OND – equivalent to A Levels – which was a leader to a degree. Bournemouth and Poole College was a new freedom for Chris and he managed to create a lot of newfound friendships. Chris went straight from O Levels to studying the OND in Building Studies and further, onto a degree.

After Bournemouth and Poole College, Chris was accepted into the Polytechnic of Central London (which is now Westminster University) to do a 4-year sandwich course – he worked on the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre which at the time was a £5m job – it was truly ‘a great experience’ for him. 

After his degree, Chris went on to the states to work in his second industrial training period and then back to London, once complete. In his final year at BCL he was fortunate enough to be headhunted by a Chelsea-based car dealer who had bought numerous properties in Kensington and Chelsea. With little knowledge, he says: “I set up a construction company in London with his capital. Chris had to then source the staff and architects, all at the age of 20.”

One of Chris’s greatest achievements was a project at Hotel du Vin in Poole (which was the old Mansion House), and the architect for that job was in his same year at Bournemouth and Poole college. This is just one of the friends Chris has managed to keep in touch with post-college.  

Soon after, Chris met his wife in London and moved back to Dorset to set up Greendale on the 21^st May 1990. The journey was not an easy one: “I went round all the high-street banks trying to get a loan and they all laughed at me. I literally walked up and down West Cliff and East Cliff knocking on the door of all the hotels trying to get a project – but that’s history now!”

Key advice for students from Chris is to ‘do what you like doing’. He says: “If you start something you don’t like, change it because when you get into work you spend a lot of time doing it. Most of my time at college I really enjoyed. Make sure you’re passionate about it.” 

He adds: “You create a legacy wherever you go. When I’m driving, I go past the little clock tower at Upton and say ‘Oh, we did that for the millennium’ and I go past Russell Cotes Art Gallery and Museum and say ‘Oh we did that’ and I’m driving on the motorway and say ‘we did that too’. Also, Greendale did Poole Hospital and the Maternity Wing, for example. “It’s great for the team who worked on it actually did it too – a bit of satisfaction for them”, he says 

Greendale now has 62 staff members with numerous contractors and subcontractors. “With the current project at Bournemouth and Poole College, we’ve got the Site Manager and labourers and roofers, electricians and other subcontractors.” 

Chris says: “Being Director comes with significant responsibility. People are relying on us. It’s not about me –nor about the Board of Directors – we’re just small cogs in the wheels - it’s about all of our team out there”. 

Chris says Greendale’s USP is probably its versatility. “We probably also operate in lots of different sectors. School buildings. We also do industrial units like the Castlepoint and quite a bit of work for the NHS. BCP Council and Bournemouth University we have also done work for. If one sector goes quiet then we operate through the others. We get repeat customers it helps to be established they come to us. We like to do a good job and get it done.”

Chris explains that Greendale did a lot of work around the pandemic, with some staff even driving to Lyme Regis for 26 months to get on site for 7:30 am. He said that generally it is a long drive in all weathers. 

He adds: “We’re currently doing some work with Bournemouth Airport and the Jet2 flights. The airside stuff can’t start until all the flights have stopped, and of course, there’s flight delays too.” He finishes with: “These days, really it’s my job is to get business in!”