City Building, winner of the Queen's Awards for Sustainable Development in 2012 and 2018, tell us about their sustainable business model and what it has meant to win 2 Queen's Awards.
Our second Queen's Awards win
Since we were founded in Glasgow in 2006, we have grown to become one of Scotland’s largest construction companies with over 2,200 staff.
Our unique social ethos of building a sustainable future underpins our drive to deliver excellence across a wide range of high quality construction and manufacturing operations.
These include repairs and maintenance, design and build construction projects, new house building, major investment and refurbishment, manufacturing and specialist services including district heating, solar thermal and solar PV installations.
It is a huge honour for us to win the Queen’s Award for Sustainable Development for a second time. As well as being a major boost for our workforce, it is also fantastic for our customers, our suppliers and the communities in which we work and serve. It shows that we are leading the way in the construction industry and that we are not resting on our laurels since our previous win in 2012.
We have always set ourselves high standards and we continue to aim to raise the bar in everything we do.
Constructing sustainability
Sustainability is at the heart of our values as a business and that includes providing sustainable employment.
Half of our 260 staff at RSBi, our manufacturing division and one of Europe’s leading supported employers, have a disability. We also have Scotland’s largest apprentice programme, with 324 apprentices on our books and we consistently achieve a 94% completion rate compared with an industry average of 75%. We are especially proud that we employ 20% of all female craft apprentices in Scotland.
Our socially responsible approach is also prevalent throughout our business operations, from our procurement processes to our fair working practices.
We have our own waste management system and we are constantly striving to find innovative ways of reducing our carbon footprint. When we are serving in communities, we take great care to ensure we are respectful of the environments in which we work.
Building the business with Queen's Awards
The Queen’s Awards are recognised as a pinnacle of UK business achievement and winning this accolade puts us in a strong position to achieve further growth. As a business we can display the Queen’s Awards emblem everywhere, from the signage on our vans through to our marketing materials and our tendering documents. Our previous Queen’s Award is one of the first things that visitors see when they come through the doors of our headquarters in Glasgow.
One of the most significant benefits of receiving such a prestigious award is the immense sense of pride it instils in our workforce. We are delighted to have won for a second time, and who knows, maybe one day we will be announcing a third.
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