N&G Groundworks
N&G Groundworks build the roads, drains and foundations a development stands on, for main contractors, developers and local authorities across Dorset, Devon and Somerset. They’ve been with Sonder for years, and the work had outgrown the website.
30+
years in groundworks and civil engineering
£5m
top project value, now shown on the homepage
The situation
N&G have spent more than thirty years on the part of construction nobody sees once it’s finished: Section 38 and 278 highway works, sewer requisitions, drainage, earthworks and foundations. Their projects range from £100,000 to £5 million, for contractors including CG Fry and Greendale Construction.The people who hire them are commercial directors, project managers and site managers. They know the trade inside out, and they can tell within a few seconds whether a contractor looks big enough for the job.
The old site had all the right information, but it didn’t look like a company working at that scale.
So the brief was mostly visual. The site had to look as solid as the work and talk directly to the people who sign off groundworks packages.What had to be true
Three questions came before any design. What does a groundworks contractor look like when it’s one of the strongest in its region? What does a project manager need to see before picking up the phone? And how do you make a site about drainage and earthworks feel like it’s moving?
The decisions
Type with weight behind it
We replaced the typefaces with heavier, more industrial display type for headings, paired with a plain, readable face for the detail. Uppercase labels and numbered section markers (//01, //02) take their cue from drawing sheets and site signage, which this audience reads every day.Lights down
The site moved to light type on a dark palette. Photos of plant, open trenches and crews in hi-vis stand out more against charcoal than against white, and the whole site now feels closer to the kit N&G use than to a brochure.
Proof where a buyer looks first
Before anyone hands over a package, they check accreditations, project values and who else has used the contractor. All of that now sits high on the homepage. The stats come straight after the hero, then Constructionline, CHAS, SMAS, CPCS and NPORS, partner logos, and testimonials from named project managers at CG Fry, Greendale Construction and LEAN Projects.Movement with a job to do
The hero opens on video of N&G’s teams and machines at work. Further down, the micro-interactions are short and mechanical: panels slide into place and lock. The motion gives the page momentum without getting in the way of the information.
What’s live now?
A website that looks like the work of a contractor delivering £5m schemes, built on Envelope.Nine service pages, five location pages and seven sector pages, all in the same visual language. A developer in Taunton and a council officer in Weymouth both land on a site that’s clearly the same firm.
Accreditations, partners and named testimonials sit where procurement teams expect to find them.
The whole site now looks like it could take a load.
