Family Legacy Monitor – Corporate Legacy Story Interview Series: Kevin Clancy

Foundations Built By Hand – A Family, a Shovel and Seventy Years of Doing the Right Thing

Kevin Clancy has spent decades leading a family construction business his Irish father built from nothing. Now in its third generation, the Clancy Group generates nearly £500 million in annual revenue and employs around 3,000 people. Sitting down with Professor Andrea Calabrò in London, Kevin reflects on ambition, loss, identity, and the only thing that has ever really mattered: not what he built, but how he built it and for whom.

Origins: The Logic of the Second Son

Kevin Clancy speaks quietly, but with the certainty of a man who has watched the world change and adapted along with it. Sitting in London, he begins not with turnover figures or strategic pivots, but with a detail that most business leaders would consider irrelevant: birth order.

His father, Michael J. Clancy, was not the eldest son. In Ireland in the 1940s, that meant something decisive: he would not inherit the family farm. What might have been a defeat became instead the founding logic of everything that followed. Michael married, moved to London with his wife Kathleen, and he did “everything that paid well”, a phrase Kevin returns to several times, not with embarrassment but with something closer to reverence.

This was not unusual. The post-war decades saw hundreds of thousands of Irish men and women arrive in Britain to build its roads, lay its pipes, dig its foundations. Irish-owned construction firms became a defining feature of the British landscape, from the Murphys and the O’Rourkes to, in time, the Clancys. What distinguished the best of them was not merely commercial skill but a particular moral code: fierce loyalty to workers, a mistrust of ostentation, and a belief that the measure of a business was not its profits but its people.

Context

Irish immigrants formed the backbone of post-war British construction. By the 1960s, an estimated 400,000 Irish-born workers were employed in UK construction building the motorways, power stations and housing estates that defined modern Britain.

Michael Clancy embodied that tradition. In the post war housing boom, he received a call about creating the foundations and infrastructure for traditional family homes. Michael accepted the contracts and dug the foundations himself, alongside his brothers, by hand. No machine. No subcontractor. Just men, shovels, and determination. By 1958, what had started as informal labour had become formal: M.J. Clancy & Sons Ltd was registered in Wembley, undertaking groundworks, drainage and road works across London.

Kevin grew up in this world. Summers meant building sites; school breaks meant learning drainage and carpentry not from textbooks but from doing. He studied civil engineering at university and returned to help manage the company’s bank relationships when finances were tight. “You just did what was needed” he says. The phrase is simple. The weight behind it is not.

“My father did everything that paid well. He wasn’t the eldest, so he didn’t inherit the farm.

He had to make his own way.”

— Kevin Clancy

Building: Contracts, Pipes and the Education of a Business

The 1960s and 1970s were years of steady expansion. Kevin’s brother Dermot joined the company in 1970; their sister Mary followed in 1980. Although they shared the same family values, each sibling brought different strengths to the business. Kevin, trained as a civil engineer, was naturally drawn to operations and technical excellence. Dermot inherited much of their father’s entrepreneurial instinct, combining commercial drive with an exceptional ability to build customer relationships. Mary complemented both brothers through her management of administration, banking relationships, and insurance, while often acting as the family’s quiet peacemaker whenever different perspectives emerged.

Clancy Developments was formed in 1963 to build residential housing. By 1973, the company had made its first significant acquisition: R.E. Docwra Ltd, a water and gas public works contractor that would, decades later, give the merged group the name Clancy Docwra.

By 1979, annual turnover had grown from £1m to £5m across the decade. A new freehold head office was obtained in Harefield, Middlesex, the company’s home to this day. In 1983, the firm celebrated its 25th anniversary; the head office was formally opened by broadcaster Terry Wogan, a small moment that speaks of the company’s standing within the Irish community in Britain.

The Year Everything Changed

Then came 1984. Michael Clancy died suddenly. He was not ill. There was no warning. Kevin and Dermot became Joint Managing Directors. Annual turnover stood at £8m, respectable, but fragile without its founder. “It was a shock” Kevin says. “He was a good person to work for. A good guy.” And then, quietly: “What would Dad have done?” That question became a kind of internal compass in the years that followed. Not a constraint, but a check, a way of testing decisions against values that had never been written down but were universally understood within the family.

Kevin distinguishes clearly between what his father wanted to be, commercially successful, providing for his family, and what Kevin himself aspires to: to be remembered for having done the right thing for people. “My father was a good businessman” he says, and “I want to be remembered for having done the right thing for people.” It is a distinction between performance and character, and Kevin is entirely clear about which he considers the higher calling. Kevin is also careful to acknowledge that the company’s success was built on the complementary leadership he shared with his brother, rather than on individual achievement. While he often describes himself as the engineer, Dermot was, in Kevin’s own words, “the entrepreneur” bringing energy, optimism, and an instinctive ability to win the confidence of customers. Kevin and Dermot built the business together over four decades. “The two brothers like working together” Kevin notes. “They played football together.” The personal bond is the foundation of the professional one, not a complication of it. Together, they formed a partnership that mirrored the balance between operational discipline and entrepreneurial vision established by their father.

The Reflection Corner: On Legacy As Governance

The question “what would Dad have done?” is more than an act of grief. Family business researchers describe it as a form of values-based governance: an internalised moral framework that guides decisions when formal rules fall short. It is, arguably, the most resilient form of institutional memory a family firm can possess.

Transformation: From Construction to Infrastructure

The death of Michael Clancy coincided, almost exactly, with one of the most consequential shifts in British economic policy: the privatisation of public utilities. The Water Act of 1989 transferred England’s ten regional water authorities into private hands, creating a market where none had existed before. Kevin describes what followed with characteristic understatement. Forty companies rushed in. He calls it “dirty business”, not as a moral judgement, but as a literal description: excavating mains, replacing Victorian pipes, managing sewerage networks across London and the south-east.

The Clancys moved fast. In 1991, the business won contracts with Southern Water, Thames Water, Anglian Water, Wessex Water, Mid-Southern Water, and East Surrey Water. By 1990, annual turnover had reached £25m. In 1990 the company was also the first contractor in the UK to purchase microtunnelling equipment, an early signal that technical innovation would sit alongside traditional values as a pillar of its identity.

By 2001, all operations, M.J. Clancy & Sons, R.E. Docwra, Rees Pipeline Services, and Westwick Construction, were merged into a single entity: Clancy Docwra Ltd. In 2002, turnover exceeded £100m for the first time. One landmark project of this era was the Victorian Mains Replacement: the replacement of 500 kilometers of ageing water mains across London for Thames Water. The Battersea Cable Tunnel, delivered for UK Power Networks, won the Institute of Civil Engineering’s Infrastructure Project of the Year. By 2024, group turnover had reached £378.5m, with a secured order book of £1.5bn and a workforce of more than 3,000.

“Construction: you do not make tons of money. What you build instead is relationships, reputation, and trust. Those last longer than any single contract.”

— Kevin Clancy

People: The Keeper of Brothers and Sisters

If there is one theme that runs through Kevin Clancy’s account of his family’s business without interruption, from the 1950s to the present day, it is the treatment of workers. His father introduced one of the first pension schemes for employees in the construction sector. He paid everyone on time, a discipline that was neither universal nor easy in an industry where cash flow is perennially precarious.

“You have to always be your brother or sister’s keeper” Kevin says. It is a phrase from scripture, transformed into a management philosophy. He believes it is more important now than it has ever been. “They will also be your brothers and sisters” he says of his employees. “Parents do not need to be the referees.” The principle is simple and radical: the business relationships between the next generation should not depend on the mediation of the current one.

This ethos has expressed itself in concrete ways across decades. A standard uniform was introduced in 1993, one of the first in the UK construction industry. The first British Safety Council Award and ISO9000 Quality Systems Accreditation followed in 1994. The company launched its Apprenticeship Scheme in 2004. It runs annual Training and Development Awards, a ‘Celebrating Clancy’ programme honouring colleagues across categories including Motivator of the Year, Safety Champion, and Rising Star. Kevin has also served as Chairman of the Plant Theft Action Group, engaging with industry-wide problems that extend beyond the company’s immediate commercial interests.

From The Company:

‘Apprenticeships are vital to Clancy so we can ensure we have a consistent pipeline of talent entering the industry. A significant number of our current senior managers joined us through one of our apprenticeship programmes.’

— The Clancy Group

Kevin reflects on communication with characteristic frankness. “No one calls me Mr Clancy, I am Kevin to everyone” he says, a small observation that carries real weight. As a business grows, the personal connection that defined its early years can erode. The founder who knew every worker’s name becomes a chairman who issues company-wide emails. Kevin is conscious of this risk and treats its management as an active responsibility, not a passive inheritance.

The Question of Wealth

Kevin is also unusually candid about money, or rather, about its limits as a measure of a life well lived. His stated ambition is to pay a million pounds in tax. The observation is deliberately counterintuitive. In a culture that treats tax minimisation as financial sophistication, Kevin frames tax as aspiration: if you are paying that much, you are earning enough that something worthwhile remains. “Business is simple” he says. “Make more than you spend. But don’t let your business become a charity.”

The question of whether money makes you happy hangs in the air. Kevin does not answer it directly. But the answer is implicit in everything else he has said. Wealth, for Kevin, is not an end but a context – the condition that makes it possible to do the things that matter: to educate your children, to pay your workers fairly, to build something that outlasts you.

“Your ambition in life is to pay a million in tax. So, you will be left with something. Business is simple: make more than you spend. But don’t let your business become a charity.”

— Kevin Clancy

Family Governance: Thirteen Children and the Art of Staying Together

The Clancy family is, by any standard, large. Across the four siblings, Kevin, Dermot, Doreen and Mary, there are thirteen children in the next generation, all educated privately, many holding degrees, MBAs, or law qualifications. Kevin notes that four or five hold MBAs; several are lawyers. The family has, in effect, built its own professional class across a generation.

Managing a business in which many highly educated family members have a potential stake is not straightforward. Kevin is honest about the complexity. Succession is the word that haunts every family business conversation, and the Clancys have navigated it twice. When Michael died in 1984, Kevin and Dermot stepped up as Joint Managing Directors. When they moved to become Joint Chairpersons, their nephew Matthew Cannon, Doreen’s son, and a former professional rugby union player with London Irish, became CEO in 2018.

Matthew’s ascent was structured, not automatic. He joined the business in 2004, served on the board from 2013, became Chief Operating Officer in 2016, and CEO two years later, a twelve-year apprenticeship before full leadership. Alongside his appointment, the company brought in its first non-executive director, signaling willingness to accept outside perspective at the board level. These are not accidental decisions. They reflect a deliberate theory of governance: the flexibility of a private company, combined with the discipline of professional management and an intentional process towards building a lasting family legacy.

Kevin also speaks about the Family Meeting, a practice that has become more structured in recent years. It is not, he is careful to say, a forum for grievances or for second-guessing management decisions. It is something more deliberate: a space in which family members outside the business can understand it, and family members inside the business can remember why it exists. The distinction matters. In many family firms, the governance of the family and the governance of the business collapse into each other, with damaging results. The model keeps them distinct while keeping them connected.

His sister Mary serves on the board, focused principally on insurance matters and financial relationships. She has also played a strong part in the success of the company. In an industry traditionally dominated by men, she became an important role model, later establishing the Women in Clancy programme and being recognised both within the construction sector and in Ireland for championing greater inclusion. Within the family, Kevin smiles that Mary also held another essential role: she was often the peacemaker, helping keep the different personalities of her two brothers aligned. Her contribution illustrates that leadership in a family business extends well beyond formal titles or executive responsibilities. Enduring family enterprises thrive not because every sibling performs the same role, but because each brings different strengths, perspectives, and expertise to a shared purpose. Recognising and valuing these complementary contributions helps keep family members engaged, reduces unnecessary rivalry, and reinforces the sense that everyone has a meaningful part to play in preserving and renewing the family’s legacy.

Values: Do the Right Thing

The phrase “do the right thing” appears in Kevin’s handwritten notes, in capitals, circled, underlined. It is not a corporate values statement. It is the answer to a question he returns to throughout the conversation: what is the right way of doing business today?

He frames the question partly by reference to what he admires in others. He mentions families who have invested with purpose and built lasting institutions. He references GE’s reputation for treating its people well. He is not uncritical of the world around him: he has watched the construction industry change, has seen the race to the bottom on fixed-price contracts, and is alert to the difference between the flexibility of a private company and the complacency that can masquerade as tradition.

The company’s five stated values, ambitious, innovative, easy to do business with, do what we say, and care, are recognisable to anyone who has followed the Clancy story. Each maps onto a decision or a practice or a moment that Kevin has described in the conversation. The safety campaigns. The uniform introduced in 1993. The ISO quality accreditation. The “Work Safe = Home Safe” PPE campaign. These are not cosmetics. They are the accumulated expression of a belief that how you treat people is the same thing as how you run your business.

“As you become bigger, you put more structure and governance in place. But the flexibility of a private company, that is the thing to protect. Be aware of what you have done.”

— Kevin Clancy

Legacy: Going the Extra Mile

When Professor Calabrò asks Kevin what he wants to be remembered for, there is a pause. Not the pause of a man who has not thought about it. “Making a difference” he says. “Going the extra mile for the people who worked for us and with us.”

He is not talking about financial returns. He is talking about something more durable. The pension that arrived on time, every time, for workers who had given their working lives to the company. The apprentice whose career the company nurtured from a first job on site to a senior management role. The long-service awards dinner where someone stood up and said that working for the Clancys had changed their life. These are not metrics that appear in annual reports. But they are the ones that measure, Kevin suggests, whether a business has been worth running.

He is thoughtful about what he does not want. He would be disappointed if the next generation simply sold. Not because selling is wrong, Kevin is too pragmatic for that, but because it would suggest that the family had abandoned the legacy built over generations. Nevertheless, Kevin acknowledges that recently this view has evolved. Through ongoing family conversations, Kevin has increasingly come to see that legacy does not necessarily reside only within an operating company. Should the family one day choose to sell all or part of the business, the same values, stewardship, and long-term responsibility could continue through a Clancy Family Office, investing patiently for future generations while preserving the family’s identity and purpose. Legacy, in other words, is attached to the family, not only to the assets it owns. But what matters the most is to be aware that legacy, in Kevin’s telling, is not transmitted automatically. It is intentionally built, tended, and chosen.

Research Corner on Stewardship

Family business research distinguishes between “owner” and “steward” mindsets. Owners ask: what is this business worth? Stewards ask: what is this business for? Increasingly, many entrepreneurial families are discovering that stewardship can survive major ownership transitions, provided that the family’s purpose, governance, and philanthropic commitments remain intentional.

There is a broader story here, too, about the Irish construction family in Britain, a story that is nearly finished. The men who arrived in the 1940s and 1950s with shovels and ambitions are gone or nearly gone. Their children, educated and credentialled, are running the companies they built. Their grandchildren are inheriting institutions. The Clancy story sits squarely within that tradition, and Kevin is its custodian: not the founder, not the inheritor, but the man in the middle, who turned a small construction firm into a £400m infrastructure group while trying, every step of the way, to remain his father’s son.

“What would Dad have done?” It turns out that this question is far more than an expression of grief. It is a governance mechanism. A moral compass. A way of making decisions when no rulebook exists. It is a form of succession planning that no consultant could have designed and no board resolution could have captured. For more than seventy years, it has quietly guided the Clancy family through change, growth, and uncertainty.

The answer, as Kevin sees it, is remarkably simple: do the right thing. Pay your people fairly. Build for the long term. Don’t let your business become a charity, but don’t let it become a machine either. And when the next generation looks back, make sure they remember not only what you built, but what you stood for. Make sure the story can be told, with pride and without embarrassment, in front of the very people who helped make it possible.

Ultimately, Kevin Clancy’s story reminds us that legacy is neither a building nor a balance sheet. It is the deliberate choice to preserve and carry forward a family’s values across generations, whatever form the future may take. Businesses may evolve, ownership may change, but a family’s legacy endures when its purpose, its principles, and its commitment to people remain intentional.

This article is part of the ‘What Do You Want to Be Remembered For?’ campaign arising out of the partnership programme of JTC Group, JTC Private Office and SDA Bocconi School of Management. Known as the Family Legacy Monitor, this research initiative curates legacy stories from family businesses and entrepreneurial families to help share and reflect on their journeys. The campaign explores values, identity, and the transmission of responsibility across generations. Interview conducted by Professor Andrea Calabrò, March 2026. Additional research drawn from public company records, The Clancy Group official history and industry sources.

The Family Legacy Monitor:

Your legacy: A story worth sharing

Having worked as strategic advisers over decades with many global families and businesses both JTC Private Office and SDA Bocconi School of Management know that legacy isn’t accidental but a story worth sharing. Whether you are part of a family business, a leader, or an individual, your experiences, the values that shaped you and the choices you’ve made, can guide and inspire others on their own legacy journey.

Get in touch via [email protected] and visit our webpage or view our fact sheet.

About JTC Group and JTC Private Office:

At JTC we understand the complex needs of businesses and families. We are a global professional services business that provides fund, corporate, and private client administration worldwide. JTC is foremost a people led business founded in 1987 operating in 24 jurisdictions. JTC Private Office, is a specialised, high-end division within JTC Group, with a relationship first focus approach designed to meet the holistic and complex needs of ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) families.

About SDA Bocconi School of Management:

The business school is one of Europe’s leading Business schools. Ranked:

1. 1st by Bloomberg Businessweek as European B School 2025-26
2. 1st for Worldwide Custom Education programmess by the Financial Times
3. 4th for worldwide global MBAs by the Financial Times
4. Professor Andrea Calabrò on ranked 3rd among 4,906 family business scholars worldwide in the 2026 edition of the Family Business Research Index

Homepage | SDA Bocconi

Photo Gallery

To view photos of the Clancy Group over the years, please click here.

The Clancy Group: Corporate Timeline