Sep 2010 
“Interior and commercial refurbishments”. It’s a pretty wide-ranging remit, covering office building refurbishments; and all sorts of property refurbishments, from domestic to large-scale commercial. In an age where niche delivery seems to be the name of the business game, can a single company cover such a broad canvas, successfully?
The short answer: yes, if that company is TJ Hall. Started over 30 years ago, and still family run, is living proof that attention to detail and sensible working practices can breed astonishing success. Since the late 1970s, TJ Hall has grown into an interior fit out and full-scale commercial construction heavy-hitter, whose client roster includes the MoD, Her Majesty’s Prisons, and Sainsbury’s. Not bad for an industrial fit out and construction company from the West Midlands, whose starting philosophy was one of simple family values – transparency, honesty and reliability.
It’s heartening to think that those values have stood where other, more ruthless business models have fallen: while the ‘80s left the UK with nothing more than a credit card headache, and the Noughties saw the final collapse of business systems built on ruthlessness and greed, the not-so-little fit out experts from the Midlands just kept on growing. Why? Because their refurbishments “philosophy” – which is also the key to their ability to carry out all stripes of construction projects, big to small, domestic interior refurbishments to turnkey commercial projects – was (and is) based on sustainability. Sustainable promises, honest client interaction. Sounds simple when it’s said aloud: though apparently not simple enough for the heaps of multinational casualties littering the shores of post credit-crunch Britain.
What TJ Hall does so well is this: every project the company undertakes is approached on its own merits, without preconceived ideas about how it ought to be done. Coming into fit out and construction projects like this means that the right levels of material, planning, time commitment and personnel can be thrown at it. No point starting simple domestic refurbishments with a major commercial team and a vast planning operation: just as it wouldn’t be feasible to start huge commercial projects on the budget and timescale of a small building firm. TJ Hall, by giving each refurbishments job the space to develop on its own terms, has managed to do what more bullish companies would have found impossible: corner several refurbishments markets at once.
Think about it this way: normally, small scale interior fit outs would be undertaken by a small scale company. A refurbishments concern, in other words, who are geared up for small to midrange interior projects – and by extension incapable of managing commercial refurbishments. TJ Hall, though, whose 30-year interior fit out and construction reputation precedes them, have simply learned to direct their resources according to the job at hand. Which means that anyone from Williams F1 and Cosworth Racing, to Joe Bloggs down the road, can – and do – have confidence in their expertise and reliability. It’s a comforting thought. TJ Hall, the little fit out and construction company that made it big, continue to succeed where others failed – by honesty, integrity and reliability. Clearly, in the refurbishments industry, old-fashioned values are the new world order.