Castle Green Homes has grown its IT department from a single person to a six-strong team to support continued growth.
Headquartered in St Asaph and Preston Brook, the business has transformed from a regional builder to a major player across North Wales and the North West of England, following a management buyout backed by Bridgemere UK in 2020.
Dave Nicholls was the sole IT person, until the appointment of senior IT technician Ian Cheeseman in 2021.
Castle Green currently builds around 600 homes a year and aims to deliver 1,000 homes a year by 2030. This growth has led to increased demands on the IT team and in the last year four more new faces have been enlisted – head of IT and systems Dave Johnson, IT manager Carlo Turri, systems developer Jack Aitken and regional IT systems and support engineer Adam Hayes.
Dave Johnson said:
“Technology now underpins almost every part of the organisation, from site and sales operations through to finance and reporting. Bringing people into the team is about keeping pace with business growth, ensuring core systems remain stable and reliable, with the capacity to move things forward by improving processes, introducing new systems, or strengthening security. The role of IT isn't just about support; it enables the business to operate more efficiently and scale in the right way. Growing the team has allowed us to be more proactive rather than just reacting to issues as they come up.”
One of the challenges the team is facing head on is adapting to meet the demands of the growing business, moving towards modern, cloud-based platforms, with standardised devices and improved remote support so people can work effectively wherever they are.
“Cyber security is important as the more the business grows, the bigger the risk becomes. Our move towards CyberEssentials has involved a layered approach – improving the technology itself but also putting a lot of emphasis on user awareness and good practice across the business,” Dave added.
AI is helping take some of the repetitive workload away including basic support tasks, monitoring, and some elements of designing and coding systems and reports, enabling the team to focus on more value-driven work, the firm said.
“Across the wider business, there's clearly a lot of potential as AI can help automate routine tasks, improve access to information, and support better decision-making,” Dave said.
“But it's not just about enabling access to tools. A big part of our focus is helping people understand where it genuinely adds value, and making sure it's used in a sensible, controlled, and responsible way, aligned with how the business handles data.”
