This week, we’re shining a spotlight on Mackenzie Construction, a leading civil engineering and infrastructure contractor with a growing presence across the Highlands and Islands. Discover how the business is delivering complex projects, building local partnerships and investing in innovative solutions across the North.
Mackenzie Construction was founded in Glasgow in 1980 and built on a commitment to quality, safety and strong client relationships. Forty-five years on, that commitment hasn’t changed, even as the business around it has grown considerably. We’ve gone from a local contractor into a company turning over £60 million a year, with more than 300 people working out of hubs in Glasgow, Inverness, Dundee, Newcastle and Stafford.
The North of Scotland has been part of that story for well over fifteen years, but it was opening a dedicated Inverness office, more than seven years ago now, that gave us a proper foothold in the Highlands. That decision reflected something we believe strongly, that infrastructure in remote and island communities needs a delivery partner who understands the place. Everything we’ve built here since has grown from long relationships with clients like Scottish Water and Scottish Canals, expanding into new sectors and continuing to embed ourselves in the local community and business landscape.
Meet Contracts Manager, Darren Hendry
I’m Darren Hendry, Contracts Manager for our Inverness office. I oversee the day-to-day delivery of our projects across the North, everything from water infrastructure to marine civils out on the islands and multi disciplined work onshore. At the moment that includes a pier repair project for Highland Council at Portree Harbour on the Isle of Skye.
A typical day is never really typical. I might start at my desk working through programme and tender details, then be on a site visit by the afternoon, sometimes on the mainland, sometimes waiting on a ferry timetable.
What I enjoy most is the problem solving that comes with working in remote locations. You can’t just call in another supplier at short notice on Skye. You plan properly, build relationships with local people, and make it work.
One of the most rewarding projects for me personally has been the pier repair works at Portree Harbour on Skye, for The Highland Council. It’s a live, operational harbour, so everything has to be sequenced around ferries, weather windows and the needs of the local community who rely on it daily. Working alongside our marine partners RS Divers, we’ve been repairing and strengthening the structure while keeping disruption to a minimum. Seeing a project like that come together, in a location as challenging and important to the community as Skye, is exactly why I enjoy this job.
People don’t always realise the breadth of sectors we actually work across, water, marine, energy, environmental and defence, or the depth of expertise our teams carry, particularly in the water sector and structural refurbishment. We’ve been refurbishing treated water assets for Scottish Water for more than three decades, and our structural refurbishment division, established back in 1984, handles some of the most technically demanding concrete repair and waterproofing work in the country.
Innovation
The other thing that might surprise people is the investment we’re making in innovative developments. We’ve created AquaVis 3D with a specialist partner, a scanning technology that inspects live water tanks without draining them or sending anyone into a confined space. And we’ve developed our own Smart Surface soil stabilisation solution, for roads and paths in rural areas that recycles existing ground material for a truly sustainable solution that contributes to the circular economy.
Reliability and consistency
Because we deliver most of our work through our own directly employed teams rather than subcontracting it out, we can hold ourselves to one consistent standard from tender through to completion. Richard Millar, Chief Operating Officer, Scottish Canals, said, “The team at Mackenzie Construction were reliable, supportive, and responsive to changing needs and circumstances throughout.”
Clients working in remote parts of the Highlands and Islands also value that we understand the practical realities, ferry schedules, weather windows, limited local supply chains, and plan around them rather than being caught out by them.
Scottish Water has been our biggest client in the North for decades, and that relationship remains as strong as ever. But we’ve always been conscious that real, sustainable growth can’t depend on one client alone, however good the partnership.
So we’ve been deliberate about diversifying, building relationships in marine, energy and environmental sectors we hadn’t focused on as heavily before. The lesson has been straightforward, if not always easy to act on. Don’t let one relationship, however strong, become the whole strategy.
Growth, but sustainable growth
We’re focused on deepening our existing frameworks with long-standing clients across the North, while continuing to build relationships in energy and other sectors we’re newer to. We’re also refreshing our Smart Surface offering this year, with an eye on renewables clients.
Alongside that, we want to keep embedding ourselves in the local community, through sponsorships, partnerships and the relationships we build with people across the Highlands. That side of the business matters just as much to us as the projects themselves. We’ve also been building a growing partnership with Inverness Caledonian Thistle Football Club (ICTFC) over the past year, which has given us some brilliant opportunities to get more involved in community life across the Highlands. It’s still growing, but it’s already one of the things I’m most proud of.
Being part of the Chamber gives us a direct line into the wider business community here, which matters for a company that can otherwise spend most of its time out on site rather than in the room with other local businesses. It’s a straightforward, practical way to raise our profile across the North beyond the clients we already work with, and to stay connected to what’s happening across other sectors in the Highlands.