JUST what the world needs, a branded builder.

“Yeah, I think we’ve been called a bit woofty on occasions,” says Garvis Snook, chief executive of Rok, “and when I meet our peer group I do hear them laugh about what we’ve done. But in the past few years some of the bigger construction groups have looked at us and you can see them thinking, actually, it works.”

Snook – it’s an old Somerset name – raises a quizzical eyebrow. Tall, balding and bristly, with head and beard shaved to half an inch of his skull, he looks every inch the tough construction boss, yet talks softly, keen to explain the extraordinary transformation his building group has been through.

Six years ago it was Exeter Building Company (EBC) – a listed but moribund firm based in southwest England, going nowhere and losing money. Now, as Rok, it’s a development, building and maintenance group that stretches from Truro to Thurso and nestles just outside the FTSE 250.

This week it is expected to unveil another set of impressive interim results, with more to come. Rok has close links with insurance companies, and will soon be busy fixing Britain’s flood damage.

For Snook, the son of a scaffolder, it’s a personal vindication of his hunch that a branded service approach could work in construction. You might have seen the firm’s Rok vans, with their tagline The Nation’s Local Builder, nipping round towns. You might have driven past one of Rok’s 30 regional bases – the group has no head office, so that local outposts remain close to their communities.

The firm, which takes on everything from general repairs to medium-sized construction, seems determined to be different. It talks a lot about vision and values and “the Rok experience”; Snook casts himself in a Sir Richard Branson role, often photographed with motorbike and leathers.

Even the trendily misspelt rebranding – Rok was thought up by Snook’s PA when he was brainstorming for a powerful, single-syllable title – is designed to provoke. That is why hairy-arsed rivals think Rok is woofty.

Well, who’s laughing now? Snook, 54, has taken Rok from a market value of £7m as EBC, to £322m. Turnover is £684m and there are 4,000 employees. He says he is aiming to run 200 branches, with the Midlands, East Anglia and Wales as key expansion areas.

He also claims the group’s focus on smaller-ticket work gives it protection against an economic downturn.

“We haven’t been tested in a major recession yet but in the last recession, in the early 1990s, there was a fall-off in big capital projects of 15% at the peak, but there was growth in repair and maintenance and smaller building work. Our business model is designed to shift resources, dependent on demand.”

Old hands in the industry wonder if that’s optimistic, but few doubt that Snook is a driven man. Dressed in a suit and tie in a meeting room at Rok’s London City branch, he is smoothly charismatic yet chummy, and oddly vulnerable at times.

Yet he has emerged from 30 years working through West Country building firms to become a polished performer in the City. Snook won chief executive of the year in January at the Quoted Company awards – for firms outside the FTSE 350 – and expects his firm to enter the FTSE 250 soon.

Now living in London’s Chelsea, and recently remarried to a former Rok employee, he has also – according to one associate – reinvented himself on the back of his firm’s rapid success. That shift, plus his Bransonesque determination to declare that he is changing the building industry, makes him a controversial figure for some.

“His modesty is lacking at times,” sniffs one rival boss. That has led to malicious gossip – to reports that he has left Rok, even that he has a terminal illness – all untrue. He has clearly got under people’s skin.

Snook laughs it off. “A fund manager even rang me up and asked me: are you ill? I said, no.” He grins. “After our next presentation, he came up and said, ‘are you sure you’re not peaky?’ ” Rok’s sudden rise, in particular its pulling power for talent, may be starting to perturb the construction sector. “Rok has become a serious pain to some of the major players because it is being successful at stuff they have walked away from,” says John Dance, formerly at Rok, now a consultant. “It has ruffled feathers.”

Snook says he is simply imposing modern management thinking on an old-fashioned business. The reason others haven’t done it before, he adds, is simply because the sector is too “testo-sterone driven”. “Construction companies when they grow want to build the biggest, most complex buildings going. They want trophies and they leave the everyday stuff for the smaller boys.”

Rok’s range of work differentiates it from others. It runs three divisions: general repairs and maintenance, building (projects up to £500,000), and development (up to £30m). It will tackle anything from private house extensions to schools, hospitals and social housing. Snook says the community links, having local branches employing local people, are key. “People in communities would rather spend money with people they know and trust.”

Decentralised control is another selling point. “I’d always been told in construction that you can’t devolve power because you can’t trust the workers,” says Snook. “But I think you have to free people up to maximise potential.”

Hence Rok employs all its workforce under the same terms and conditions and prioritises development and training. There are residential induction courses (A Taste of Rok), and career development assessments (Rok Climbing). Snook describes himself as “chief coach” of the leadership team.

Isn’t that a bit pretentious? He frowns. “Do you think I’m pretentious?” No, just testing.

He says you have to know his background to understand what he’s doing. “My father was a scaffolder. There was no continuity of work, if it rained you got no pay, you were hired by the week, you had no guaranteed holiday. That fed into the thought proc-esses behind Rok – you should have some security and confidence in work.”

Snook was brought up in Frome, Somerset, the middle child of three. He attended the local secondary modern school, and started training to be a teacher, before deciding he would rather see the world. He returned home to help his father, who had moved on to demolition work. Snook liked it so much he never left.

Yet he has not had an easy ride up. Married young, with five children by the time he was 30, he has had his ambitions thwarted at least twice. At the Taunton contractor Stansell, where he rose to be managing director, he was blocked in a management buyout when the owning family sold the firm to Morgan Sindall, a quoted construction group.

Instead of resigning – “Hey, I had two of my children at private school and a mortgage, no options” – he worked closely with John Morgan, Morgan Sindall’s founder, whose empowering style left its mark.

Morgan was impressed with Snook’s attitude. “Garvis was very energetic and very keen to learn,” says Morgan. Snook, he adds, was already strong on strategy and marketing, less good at detail. “What I didn’t realise was how ambitious he was.”

Snook left Morgan Sindall to join Mowlem as southern region managing director, only to be knocked back again when the company changed its UK boss before he started. His job offer was changed. A headhunter told him he should look at the top slot in EBC instead.

It was, says Snook, a business close to the edge of extinction. “Losing £2m a year, net assets of £11m, pension deficit of £4.5m, 1,200 private individual shareholders, no institutions. When I put my proposals to the board, the deputy chairman turned to the chairman and said, “I’m not sure if what he’s proposing will work, but where we are doesn’t work either, so we might as well let him have a go.”

Snook decentralised the business, sacked half the administrative staff – a third of the workforce – and rebranded the firm.

“The vision was lots of branches run by local people, employing local people and gaining work by the relationship they have with those communities, and delivering great service.”

In an industry that is primarily driven by lowest-cost tendering, that is a brave strategy. Isn’t Rok constantly undercut, not least by Polish builders? Snook laughs. “You’ve been reading too many newspapers. If you want to buy your building work on the black economy then fine.”

Much of Rok’s bigger-ticket work is with public sector or not-for-profit organisations, which like its emphasis on trust and local relationships. Its growing reliance on maintenance and repair – it has deals with Lloyds TSB Insurance, Royal Sun Alliance and Zurich – benefits from local knowledge too.

Gillian Camm, Rok’s senior nonexecutive director, says Snook’s next test is to keep that local focus as the group grows ever bigger. “The real challenge is not to take on all the stuff that comes with a big organisation, the corporate treacle,” says Camm.

Then there’s holding on to the boss. Larger companies have noted Rok’s success. Will Snook stick around or will he be tempted by a bigger challenge?

He grins. “It took me 30 years to work out what I wanted to do in this industry and where I could make a difference. Why would I want to go anywhere else?”

Others concur. “He could leave in two years and owe Rok nothing,” says one who has worked with him. “But remember, six years ago he was a man in Exeter. Now he’s having a second life, and loving it.”

GARVIS SNOOK’S WORKING DAY

THE Rok chief executive wakes at his rented flat in London’s Chelsea at 5am. “I do e-mails for an hour, then some training,” says Garvis Snook. “I’m getting ready to climb Kilimanjaro with two of my sons. I’ve got to get fit.”

Two days a week he “hotdesks” at Rok’s London City branch, taking direct reports from seven senior executives. Otherwise he travels by train round the country, investigating acquisitions or visiting branches. “I spend about 30% of my time communicating vision and values.”

Snook is home by 7.30pm and asleep by 11pm. “I’m used to rising early. We used to have to be in the yard by 6am.”

VITAL STATISTICS

Born:September 2, 1952

Marital status:married twice, with five children

School:Selwood secondary modern, Frome, Somerset

University:York St John (two terms)

First job:demolition topman

Salary package:£405,000 plus bonus

Home:Chelsea

Car:blue Audi A4

Favourite book:Far From the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy

Favourite music:Eric Clapton

Favourite film:Dead Poets Society

Favourite gadget:GPS plotter on sailing boat

Last holiday:Italy

DOWNTIME

GARVIS SNOOK relaxes by sailing. “I keep a Moody 38 down on the Hamble [a river near Southampton].” He also likes hill walking and visiting the theatre, and spends a lot of time in the West Country, where his mother still lives.

He has five grown-up children and three grandchildren to fill any spare time. He recently returned from honeymoon with his second wife.

Most of his money is spent on renovating a new home in Chelsea. “It’s being done up by Rok and no, I get no discount. It’s important I use Rok and equally important that I pay the proper commercial rate. What I do is reflected throughout the organisation.”

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