Gerard McCaughey obituary: Innovator who disrupted the industry

Born October 24th, 1962

Died October 18th, 2023

The Monaghan-born US-based businessman Gerard (Gerry) McCaughey has died aged 60. McCaughey was best known as the founder of Century Homes with his father, Brian, brother Gary and business partner Jim McBride in 1989. Over the following 15 years, the business grew from a small factory in Monaghan to one of the largest timber frame manufacturers in Europe.

In 2005 Century Homes was sold to Irish multinational building materials manufacturer Kingspan for €98 million. McCaughey remained chief executive of Century Kingspan for the next three years but when house building ceased following the financial crash, he moved with his family to the United States.

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In 2010 he set up Infinico, a consulting business promoting off-site timber frames in the American market from his base in Manhattan Beach, California. Affectionately known in construction circles as “Mr Off-Site”, McCaughey enthused about the environmental and economic advantages of timber framed houses at conferences across North America, Europe, New Zealand and Japan.

In 2017 he cofounded the company, Entekra, to launch the production of off-site timber frames on the American market where so-called stick builds (on-site timber frames) was the standard approach. The company received investment to build a factory in Modesto, California – supported by a design and engineering team in Monaghan town. And while it initially delivered pilot houses to many of the top 10 builders in the US, the fall-off in house-building in the United States contributed to its demise of the US operation in early 2023.

Bill Quigley, company director of NZEB Technologies and NuTech Renewables, worked with McCaughey during his tenure at Century Homes. “He was a disrupter. He battled to change things. He passionately believed that Ireland could lead the way in low-energy, low-carbon housing.”

In the mid-2000s Quigley and McCaughey worked together on a prototype zero-energy, zero-carbon house called the Formula One house. And while that project didn’t come to fruition, in 2007 McCaughey was heavily involved in The Lighthouse, another zero-carbon house built as a model on the grounds of the Building Research Establishment testing centre in Watford, England.

He was an agitator and an unusual bedfellow for the greening of the Irish building industry

—  Jeff Colley, editor of Passive House Plus magazine [formerly Construct Ireland]

Speaking about The Lighthouse project in an industry magazine at the time, McCaughey said, “building is one of the most conservative industries on the planet. It very rarely leads, it usually has to be dragged [forwards]”. Reflecting on Ireland’s building boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he said “the urban sprawl like a fungus growing out of Dublin was a missed opportunity from the carbon dioxide perspective”.

Jeff Colley, editor of Passive House Plus magazine [formerly Construct Ireland], said McCaughey’s legacy will be getting off-site timber framed housing accepted into the mainstream building culture in Ireland. “He was an agitator and an unusual bedfellow for the greening of the Irish building industry,” said Colley, a reference to McCaughey’s long-time links to the Progressive Democrats party. In the 2002 general election, McCaughey failed in his bid to be elected for the Progressive Democrats as a TD for Monaghan.

Gerry McCaughey grew up the eldest of three children of Theresa and Brian McCaughey. His father set up the Irish Joinery Monaghan (IJM) timber engineering company in Monaghan town in 1965, after returning from working in the United States. Following his secondary school education in the Christian Brothers School in Monaghan town, McCaughey studied business at the Regional Technical College in Dundalk [now Dundalk Institute of Technology]. He transferred to University College Dublin to complete his Bachelor of Commerce in 1985. His thesis looked at the reasons why timber frame construction had such low market penetration in Ireland.

After college, he emigrated to the United States and set up a contracting painting business in Redondo Beach, California. He was one of many Irish emigrants at that time to be allowed to work legally in the US under the Donnelly visa programme.

He returned to Ireland in 1989 and started producing timber frames for houses in a rented factory in Monaghan with his brother and father. Over the next 15 years, Century Homes would become one of the largest timber frame producers in Europe with three factories in Ireland and two in the UK. At its peak, it had more than 650 employees and produced timber frames for 8,000 homes a year, increasing the timber frame market from 2 per cent of housing to 40 per cent of housing in Ireland.

Jack Murray, chief executive of MediaHQ and former PR consultant for Century Homes, said McCaughey was a dynamic businessman, a natural communicator and an enthusiastic mentor. “His business motto was persistence beats resistance. He was determined, innovative, hard-working, funny and curious.”

In the early 2000s, McCaughey met his wife-to-be Sophie Gallagher at a business event in Dublin Castle. The couple married in December 2004 in the Church of the Visitation in the Bronx, New York – the same church that McCaughey’s parents were married in. Their first child, Bella, was born in Dublin, months before they emigrated to the United States in 2007. Their sons, Max and twins Shane and Zach, arrived when the family had settled in Manhattan Beach, California.

His wife, Sophie, said Gerry was an older dad and definitely very traditional with regards to discipline and being strict, especially with the boys. “Our house is a chaotic madhouse, full of people, which used to drive Gerry mad as he would have liked a quieter house after his busy work week. Gerry was such a big personality in his professional life but he was actually much more introverted and not so social in his private life. He always travelled a lot but he always told our children to work hard, do well in school, have goals, and never to just presume you’ll grow up and live this way, you have to earn it.”

Gerry McCaughey is survived by Sophie, children Bella, Max, Shane and Zach, his mother Theresa, his sister, Anne and brother, Gary. His father, Brian, predeceased him.