Tenure measured in decades, not months

In construction and building technology, staff turnover is one of the biggest operational challenges businesses face. People move between companies constantly. Loyalty is rare, and long tenures are rarer.

At OKTO, our most senior people measure their time here in decades.

Ricky Portis joined us as a young engineer and is now our OKTOLabs supervisor, almost 26 years on. My brother Peter leads our technical delivery and has been with us 25 years. Lesley-Anne runs our Lisburn office and has been here more than 22 years. Gary Byrne is at the forefront of our technical engineering, almost 18 years in. Kyle is responsible for the infrastructure on our most prestigious sites, 14 years and counting. Greg was recently promoted to technical project manager after 10 years as a senior engineer.

These are not people who stayed because they had no options. They are people who chose to build their careers here, who saw something worth staying for and kept choosing it, year after year.

What they have built at OKTO is not just technical expertise. It is institutional knowledge that cannot be hired in — the understanding of how our systems work, how our clients think, how our projects need to be run. That knowledge compounds. It is the reason our projects land the way they do, and why we have been able to narrow down on such a niche service for a few specific sectors.

My brother and I worked a hundred hours a week for years building this. It was not a strategy. It was part of what the family we came from looked like. Both granddads had their own businesses. Uncles had businesses. My dad had his shop. Twelve-hour days were not unusual. That was just work.

Long hours for their own sake are not a virtue, and burnout is real. But there is something about building something with someone who is as invested in it as you are that makes the difficult periods easier to carry. The hours are different now, but the instinct is the same. We show up. We finish it. We do not leave until it is right.

I am proud of the work we deliver. I am more proud of the people who deliver it.