At the end of another busy year, here is a reminder of some of the interviews that stood out for our readers
‘This industry is absolutely fine…’ Andrew Davies on the naysayers, rescuing Kier and what the firm plans to do next
Andrew Davies has one or two things that he wants to get off his chest. The industry is not broken, as others have claimed, and it’s just not true that the industry can’t build large projects.
“This industry is absolutely fine,” Kier’s chief executive says. “I do get a little bit irritated. This industry is not broken. People should stop saying that. I get frustrated by people saying this stuff because it’s simply not true.
“We’re trying to attract people into the industry, trying to portray it as a great industry with career prospects – and there are great career prospects.”
‘On some levels, it’s a straightforward industry but it has significant challenges’ – Wates’ new(ish) CEO on what he’s learnt so far
“I grew up in a large family: 10 boys, two girls. They called me 11 of 12. They can’t be bothered with my name.”
Wates chief executive Eoghan O’Lionaird likes to deadpan. Take his first name. To be clear, is it pronounced Owen?
“You are pronouncing it perfectly correctly,” he happily confirms when asked. “There is a lot of redundancy in the name, but I’ve explained it, I think, once or more every day since I left Ireland. That’s a long time ago.”
Click here to read the full interview
‘Bid for everything, always haggle’: The life and times of John F Hunt’s John Hall
John Hall remembers where he was when he told his bank manager to go and do one. His demolition business, John F Hunt, had just lost £2m on a £1m scheme, a strip out at a building called Park House at Finsbury Circus in the City of London.
He was already under special measures from NatWest, his bank at the time, who were putting the squeeze on him further. He had just won a job, a scheme to demolish Mondial House, then the main telecoms hub in central London, and he was explaining to his bank manager that he could see a way out in the next few months if only he would stand by him.
“I was stood on the roof of Mondial House, telling him this and he said: ‘Yes, I’ve heard that before.’ I reared up and said: ‘If that’s the case, I suggest you go f**k yourself’. The next call was to Lloyds. I changed banks. Been with them ever since.”
‘I was shouting all sorts…’ Aecom’s Jo Streeten on working at the BBC, the Davis Langdon deal and dealing with egg attacks
“You can take the girl out of Chatham, but you can’t take the Chatham out of the girl.”
Jo Streeten is talking about her recent battles with the local kids in the area of north London where she lives. Her house, and others, have been egged recently and she has had enough. “We came under a consolidated egg attack on our road. I was found haring down the road, shouting all sorts of language.”
She thinks for a moment, before adding: “You do get that sort of fear in London. Do you go out and confront them? Or do you worry whether they’ve got a knife or a bigger brother? But they were quite young. We found them in the local shop rearming. We said to the shopkeeper, ‘could you at least stop selling them eggs?’ ”
Click here to read the full interview
Standing your ground: Mott MacDonald’s global MD Cathy Travers on her plans for the engineering giant
Cathy Travers is explaining how she was the youngest of five children, with four older brothers, and how this has equipped her for a career in the construction industry.
“I’m not afraid to stand my ground and express my opinion,” she says. “I started my career 36 years ago and there were very few females that worked in the business … that grounding, the rough and tumble with four older brothers, has helped me to do that.”
She may have been the most junior member of her family but these days Travers is very much a senior figure in construction.
Adjaye London CEO Lucy Tilley: ‘We’ll work even harder to carry on our legacy. We’ll keep going’
What happens when accusations of egregious wrongdoing hit the founder and globally recognised face of a leading architectural practice? This is not a hypothetical question on a management course, but the real-word scenario that last summer seemed on the verge of destroying David Adjaye’s career and bringing down the hugely successful practice he founded.
When the Financial Times’ story alleging abusive and professionally inappropriate behaviour with three black women broke on 4 July, it triggered a wave of clients from Liverpool to the UAE to drop Adjaye Associates. Adjaye himself acknowledged relationships with three women whom he went on to employ, but said they were consensual and that key abusive and coercive incidents set out in the article had simply not taken place.
The FT says the version of events it reported was corroborated by the women’s colleagues, friends and families, and that it spoke to 13 members of staff, some of whom referred to “toxic” working hours within the firm. While many clients did stand by Adjaye, the business was forced to cut staff and retrench in order to manage the financial impact.
One of the people at the forefront of managing the practice’s response was Lucy Tilley, a longstanding and trusted colleague of Adjaye’s. She has been a central – but previously low-profile – figure in the practice’s evolution. She has rarely spoken to the press but agreed to speak to Building Design, Building’s sister title, to address the allegations and set out her vision for the London studio.
Click here to read the full interview
‘It’s an amalgamation of everything we have’ – Richard Robinson and the AtkinsRéalis rebrand
“And then, here at Atkins…[pause] Réalis, I nearly missed that!”, says Richard Robinson with a laugh as he realises he is still not always in the habit of remembering to use his company’s new name. Sometimes a rebrand can take a while to sink in after all.
Think Marathon becoming Snickers, Opal Fruits morphing into Starburst or, more recently, Twitter transforming itself into X. New names can take a while to get used to even if you are the president for UK & Ireland of a huge firm that has dramatically rebadged itself in the past few months.
The rebranding of Canadian engineering services firm SNC Lavalin Group as AtkinsRéalis – along with its subsidiaries, including household UK names Atkins and Faithful+Gould – made headlines last September.
Following another recent restructure, which has seen Robinson’s role recently re-badged as president of UK & Europe, we caught up with the AtkinsRéalis’ executive to talk about the rebrand and the engineering firm’s plans for the future in the UK and elsewhere.
‘Perfect, see you Monday’ … McLaren’s Paul Heather on tier ones and being headhunted on holiday
Paul Heather can see the funny side when it is pointed out to him.
Happily ensconced at Skanska, where he was in charge of its London building business, with the Heron tower and The Gherkin among the notches on his CV, he was on holiday in Spain when a call from an unknown number came through.
“You’re never out of reach now,” he says, so he thought he had better answer it – just in case. It was a headhunter.
The person at the other end of the line was sounding him out about a job. “I said, ‘just tell me who it is, or it will be a very quick conversation’,” Heather recalls.
The headhunter stalled, adding that he couldn’t and, even if he could, Heather would have to sign an NDA. “I’m not signing an NDA, just tell me who it is or it’s game over.”
Click here to read the full interview
No comments yet