Declan Conlon, Sales Manager at Wavin Ireland, has been elected chair of the building manufacturers group, Octabuild for 2023-2024. He has been a board member since 2013.
Octabuild is unique among representative groups in the building and construction industry – its members have a solid manufacturing base in Ireland; operate to the highest technical and management quality standards; are market leaders in their business sectors and use builders merchants as their primary sales route to the end-user.
There are eight Octabuild members – Dulux Paints, Etex Ireland, Glennon Brothers, Grant Engineering, Gyproc, Irish Cement, Kingspan Insulation and Wavin Ireland.
Octabuild was established in 1984 and one of its core activities is the Octabuild Builders Merchant Excellence Awards, an all-island competition which will next take place in 2024.
Declan Conlon began his career in the building materials sector in 1995 with Glennon Brothers. He moved from telesales to sales manager, working in areas including marketing/PR, production planning, finance, recruitment and HR. In 2019 he joined Wavin to manage key accounts as well as a team of six technical sales reps who cover the Republic.
He has a degree in Business and Marketing from the University of Limerick and recently returned to education part time, undertaking an MSc in Leadership through the University of Ulster.
He places great importance on the values of the Octabuild organisation and in particular the partnership with builders merchants: “I have spent my whole working life supplying products to the merchant sector so this relationship is obviously very important to me personally. I believe in partnership and the value of long-term mutually beneficial relationships, which is central to the Octabuild ethos, and I look forward to working with the merchant sector to deliver the benefits of partnership for us all.”
In relation to the current status of the sector he says: “I believe that the shocks that have been experienced in the global economy over the last three years have re-emphasised the value of Irish-based manufacturing and I believe that the Octabuild values of excellence, innovation, and sustainability are as important as ever.”
