Rebuilding Haiti inspired big man’s tiny steps into modular homes

Nov 03, 2024

Helping out with disaster relief in Haiti gave JP Simpson his first experience of modular building techniques. The knowledge he gained there provided the builder with a firm foundation for later success.

Simpson grew up in the village of Riverstick, halfway between Kinsale and Cork city. After his Leaving Cert in 1997, he studied in Wales for a degree in wood science and forestry. “I was always into trees and forests and wood, but you never really know what you want to do when you are 17, do you?” he says.

He dropped out and apprenticed as a carpenter instead, which was much more practical. “I was always very hands-on.”

He was already self-employed by the time he did his final apprenticeship exams, and employing half of his classmates on a job: “I got a phone call from the instructor asking if I’d mind bringing them back in.”

He worked hard throughout the Celtic tiger and, when he wasn’t working, went travelling and surfing. But when the construction industry collapsed at the end of the Noughties, he experienced a financial wipeout. “I got stung on a job,” he says.

It left him with debts to clear, so when an opportunity arose to do construction work in Haiti, he jumped at it. He started six months before the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake. By chance he was at home when it struck. Three days later he was back.

“It was like landing into a war zone,” he says. But it armed him with a range of new skills. “I learnt all about modular building, even hospitals,” he says. Called SIPs, standing for structural insulated panels, the technology will be familiar to watchers of TV’s Grand Designs.

Once his work in Haiti finished he worked in Nantucket, home to some of the most expensive houses in the US. “The money was insane.”

Having made enough to clear his debts, he came home and, by 2012, was once again working for himself, doing extensions and renovations.

But he brought with him a determination to develop modular homes here, something he reckoned could provide an answer to Ireland’s property crisis.

“Why do we need a three, four or five-bedroomed house straightaway? We don’t. So why can’t we have a house that grows as the family grows, or as the finance grows?” he asks.

His idea was that planners could give the go-ahead for a four-bedroom house but let people start smaller, by building perhaps a two-bed on their site.

“Unfortunately, back then nobody knew what modular building was.” When prompted, most typically associated them with the pre-fabs at school.

Though he has built a number of one-off modular houses, he supplemented that work by focusing on niche but growing demand for “tiny homes”, under the name Big Man Tiny Homes, the business he established in 2018. He subsequently capitalised on Covid-fuelled demand for garden studios and home offices, rebranding as Big Man Modular two years later.

He has since developed a range of glamping pods for the tourism sector. “It’s a huge growth area because it answers all of a hotel’s sustainability needs. These are off-grid units that don’t need any services.”

Along the way he received assistance from the Cork North and West local enterprise office. “Between funding and mentoring, they’ve been unbelievable,” he says.

Turnover this year is €2.3 million and he has €4 million worth of jobs already in the book for next year. He attributes at least part of this success to being accessible and approachable.

“Building a house, getting married and having kids are the most stressful things you’ll do in life, and for some reason people try to do it all at once,” he says. “We take the stress out of the building because the foundation is done in two weeks, the house is up in another week, then it’s just a matter of finishing it.”