Langley and Recticel: Building trust through expert flat roof insulation

Alexander Caesari: Have you worked on a project with Recticel?

Frankie Sullivan: Yeah, I have. Loads of them. I actually had Recticel out on a few of my projects last week, drawing up designs for roofs. I'll speak to a member of the team a few times a week.

Alexander Caesari: How would you describe the relationship between Langley and Recticel?

Frankie Sullivan: Yeah, it's a good relationship, especially with the guys I regularly deal with – people like Paul Matthews, Nick Cousins, and Matt Cox. I speak to them all the time, they’ll come to survey my jobs. We work together on designs; they rely on us for information and our site findings, and likewise we rely on them for their design expertise and insulation knowledge (e.g., how to drain water more efficiently from a roof).

Alexander Caesari: Would you say there's a sense of shared values between Langley and Recticel?

Frankie Sullivan: Definitely, we have shared values – expertise, sustainability, trust. In terms of expertise, it’s about having excellent teams. We lean on them, and they lean on us as well. That's why communication has become so important, and it’s really good between us and their teams. Then for sustainability, when Recticel puts in their designs, they will make sure to avoid a lot of wastage because we don't want wastage going to landfill.

Alexander Caesari: When choosing partners and suppliers for a project, what are your main priorities?

Frankie Sullivan: Good communication is really important. People like Nick and Paul, I can just ring up whenever because I’ve got such a good personal relationship with them. So it doesn’t just feel like business, you're speaking to them on a personal level, too. I've only recently had a young baby who's only six months old, and when I call Paul up the first thing he does is ask me how she's doing, which is really lovely. Then more work focused, it’s expertise and service, because working in the construction industry, everything is very fast-paced. We need to get things turned around quickly and we need our suppliers to help deliver that.

Alexander Caesari: I'm going to ask you a few questions based around trust now, because Recticel’s new signature tagline from 2026 is changing to ‘We build trust.’ So, firstly, what does that phrase mean to you?

Frankie Sullivan: Trust is everything. The clients we deal with aren't always from a construction background. They could just be someone who owns property. So, they're trusting us to meet all the relevant regulations and tell them the correct information to do their job. Now, if they don't have trust in us to do what's right for them, then we're not doing our job. See, trust is a very, very important thing. When you see failures in construction, it shows why trust is so important to make sure people get it right.

Alexander Caesari: What would you say helps build that trust over time with a partner like Recticel?

Frankie Sullivan: Such a big part of that trust with Recticel is communication and showing their expertise and experience – what they’ve done and why they’ve done it, going through it together and explaining why. If you're in the middle of a project and you're not getting any issues come up, trust naturally builds. If all of a sudden you start doing projects with them and every single time you're getting a problem, you're going to stop using them. So, a lot of the time, the proof is in the pudding.

Alexander Caesari: Obviously, with Grenfell, Building Safety Act, much tighter compliance standards, how much more important are those trusted relationships now?

Frankie Sullivan: Trust is more important than ever. We're all experts in our own fields. I know enough about installation, but the guys from Recticel are going to know more than I know, so I can lean on them for expertise. When I need to know a quick answer to something or have questions, I can pick up the phone and speak to the guys at Recticel and pick their brains on things.

Alexander Caesari: Is there a recent example of that shared trust?

Frankie Sullivan: There's been a few. I mean, I've got one that Matt Cox has looked at for me recently, and it's a bit of a tough project. He did one for me very recently called the Alaska Buildings by London Bridge. It's like a big terrace area, and he came to site with me, we met with the surveyor, we met with the property owner, and all sat there together and explained the approach we were going to take with the design. We went through various different options, myself and Matt, and said how there's two or three different ways we can approach this. You know, we went through the pros and cons with the client of how to create the drainage, and so they were really happy and trusted us to go with the right idea. So it’s like when you trust each other, the client can see that and they trust you. The project is due to go live in May. It's not huge, but it's just quite intricate. So trust is really important.

Alexander Caesari: The film that we're creating also talks about how collaborating together makes a difference – to the project, to construction, but also to the society we're building.

Frankie Sullivan: Collaboration is so important. At the end of the day, human error still occurs, but if you've got multiple people working together, putting their heads together, it’s much less likely to happen. And that's why working with other people, looking at things from different angles, always helps. I might have one idea or perspective, and someone from Recticel might have another. Having people with different backgrounds and looking at things from different angles, bouncing ideas back and forth, it’s essential to good construction.