Our History

Coming to London from his native Ireland as a 19-year-old to seek work as a ganger on building sites was a bold move for a young Patrick O’Keefe Senior, but his determination to succeed has had far-reaching consequences for the London construction market and for the team that has become O’Keefe.

Setting up O’Keefe Construction in the summer of 1970 with very few assets other than himself and a gang of men, Patrick O’Keefe Senior, couldn’t have envisaged the sophisticated, dynamic and innovative business that still bears his name.

When O’Keefe Construction was founded, the construction industry in the U.K. was still using traditional manual methods that were labour intensive, expensive and extremely time-consuming. Looking to solve these issues, Patrick Senior extensively researched alternative methods abroad. And what Patrick would discover would go on to revolutionise our construction processes.

Realising that the use of such technology would revolutionise working practices, we imported this machinery to the UK, not only becoming among the first companies to do so, but also changing the way that the industry as a whole would utilise heavy plant machinery.

Discovering equipment specifically designed for tasks such as pile breaking, placing concrete in slabs, soil stabilisation, 3D ground modelling and most recently, the production of recycled hydraulically bound materials. This equipment would go on to benefit us in many ways; projects were made far simpler, safer, more accurate, and cost-efficient.

In the 1990s, environmental awareness led us to design and develop a machine that would set the industry standard for stabilising and remediating soil. This environmentally-friendly system had the added benefits of improving quality standards, accuracy and reliability. With the later addition of an in-house soils testing laboratory, this pioneering approach has raised the bar for the industry.

Use of technology is one thing, however we also recognise that our business processes must be innovative in order to deliver the greatest benefits to our partners and clients. With a corporate ethos that encourages ownership of both the risk and rewards inherent in the scale of the projects that we are called upon to deliver, the honest and open dialogue that project teams develop with their clients is key to ensuring that focus is kept on the commercial benefits of the design and construction process.