Icons of power

Gordon Brown
What Gordon wants, Gordon gets. While lesser politicians and newspaper editors huff and puff over the parlous state of public services and the controversial London Underground public-private partnership, one person calls the shots.

Over the last four years, the man who controls the nation's purse strings has developed a reputation for intransigence that has seen him increasingly criticised as too powerful by far. Yet with the recent demise of one-time rivals Peter Mandelson and John Prescott, Brown's supremacy is stronger than ever.

Even the prime minister cannot touch him: Brown, not Tony Blair, will decide when Britain is ready to join the euro – the most momentous economic decision in a generation.

As far as the construction industry is concerned, Brown is Mr Big. He is the person industry lobbyists must ultimately convince, but so far they have had little success: Brown has remained deaf to calls for VAT harmonisation and tax breaks for urban regeneration.

Without his fiscal backing, junior ministers have had to make do with self-funding initiatives such as the Quality Mark, the much-criticised registration scheme to combat cowboy builders.

He is the country's largest client, controlling the government's £45bn annual construction spend, and his Treasury mandarins write the procurement rules that other departments have to follow.

His unbending belief in PFI is transforming the way infrastructure is procured. Only Brown could have the audacity to force through the Tube PPP in the face of huge public and expert opposition.

And Brown has more up his sleeve: he is now flexing his muscles in the arena of planning, driving forward the forthcoming shake-up of the system to make it more business-friendly and less vulnerable to the whims of public opposition.

Lord Rogers
WITH his baggy jumpers and collarless shirts, Richard Rogers comes across as an affable grandfather rather than the most influential architect of our time.

True, since the disbanding of the urban taskforce and the demotion of his close ally John Prescott, Rogers has lost some of his clout with central government and has sometimes been reduced to carping from the sidelines at the lack of progress on the urban renaissance. And his sacking from the Welsh assembly project is a blow to his prestige.

But Rogers is still one of the best-connected people in the country (see above) and has done more than anyone else to change attitudes to the built environment.

Reporting directly to Prescott – then at the height of his powers – Rogers' urban taskforce demolished the existing status quo, consigning once ubiquitous forms of development, such as car-friendly executive estates and low-density urban housing, to the dustbin of political incorrectness. In its place, Rogers established high-density brownfield regeneration and integrated public transport as national aspirations.

When it comes to designing individual buildings, Rogers has slipped behind his great rival Lord Foster, who has achieved pre-eminence through an awesome portfolio of top-drawer commissions (the Reichstag, Chek Lap Kok, the Greater London Authority building …) and whose ruthlessly geometric style has won out over Rogers' more whimsical high-tech vocabulary as the defining turn-of-the-millennium aesthetic.

But while Foster has never fully exploited his power politically, Rogers has proven adept at reading the political runes. In a shrewd move, he switched allegiance last summer from Prescott to Ken Livingstone, accepting the mayor's invitation to become city architect for London. This ensures that he will be able to continue to set the agenda in the capital at least. But we may be witnessing the demise of Rogers as a force of national importance.

The most powerful piece of plant in the world
The construction process is a symphony of kinetic power: brawny JCBs, soaring tower cranes and other mighty machines are the industry's strongest icons. But you have to look beyond construction to find the most powerful piece of plant in the world. The monster pictured (right) is the O&K RH400, a giant hydraulic excavator used in open-cast mining.

This 10.30 m high giant can do the work of 40 standard construction site diggers, and weighs in at a mighty 900 tonnes. Its two engines produce 4400 bhp, more than a train locomotive; it can munch its way through a quarry for breakfast, its giant scoop capable of lifting 43.5 m3 of earth weighing 80 tonnes – equivalent to the payload of two articulated lorries. The extending arm can reach more than 19 m.

The UK is too puny for a machine of this size; German manufacturer O&K Mining says none has been sold here. Instead, it can be found chomping its way through Africa and Latin America. Because of its size, it is taken out of the factory on 36 lorries and assembled on site, which takes three weeks. Then there's another two-and-a-half weeks of tests before it is ready to go.

The cost of the machine is even more mind-boggling than its physical prowess: the price tag is £26m. For that, you could have 812 standard JCB diggers at £32,000 each.

Robert Donald
Robert Donald, a construction analyst at broker Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, has the power to make or break companies.

Donald, who is based in Citigroup's headquarters at Canary Wharf, heads the most respected team of construction-watchers in the City. An elusive figure, he is immensely respected, even feared, by companies and investors alike.

In the financial world, his opinion counts more than most. Fund managers, who want the most accurate and up-to-date information on companies and their prospects, turn to experts such as Donald when looking for investment options. By issuing a research note on a company or sector, he can spark a selling spree and wipe millions off company values. Conversely, a positive report will send share prices skywards.

Not surprisingly, companies wait nervously for his verdict on their strategy, contract win or latest acquisition. A potent example of Donald's power was felt by UK housebuilders in June. Their shares took a pounding when Donald and his team warned investors that, with interest rates set to rise again, the good times were over for housebuilders. Persimmon, Berkeley and Wilson Connolly, which had £100m wiped off their values the day that Donald's note was released, were just three of the companies affected. They are still recovering.

Maintaining a good share price is one of the chief executive's most important jobs. A low rating can leave companies vulnerable to takeovers and mergers. On the other hand, a high valuation can give firms the financial clout to buy others. That is why top executives spend a lot of time and money trying to butter up analysts such as Donald. But at the end of the day, it is Donald who pulls the strings.

The Sun
the most powerful force in building design in the 21st century will be the sun. As global societies start the struggle to offset global warming by curbing the use of fossil fuels, the sun will assume centre stage as the primary source of heat, light and power for buildings.

It may be 4.6 billion years old and 150 million km away from us, but the sun is the earth's biggest power source. Its 1.4 million km diameter is 109 times the earth's and the temperature of its core is 15 million °C. Every second, 3.6 million tonnes of its mass is converted into energy, and although only a two-billionth of this reaches the earth, 30 minutes supplies enough to meet the world's energy demand for a year.

Architectural form and construction techniques will evolve to maximise the exploitation of solar energy. It will be used to heat buildings through glazed sunspaces or water using solar heaters, and the use of heavy materials to create thermal mass will ensure that heat is available even when the sun is not shining. Energy from the sun will be used to generate electricity through photovoltaic panels. Alongside the architectural revolution, there will be an energy revolution as buildings turn from consumers into producers of energy.

But it is not just energy derived directly from the sun that buildings will seek to exploit. Indirectly, the sun is the source of all forms of renewable energy. It creates the rain that fills the rivers that turn the turbines in dams; it drives the wind that powers wind farms; and, through photosynthesis, it grows the crops that can then be used to heat buildings or to drive a generator.

The government has finally woken up to the potential of renewables, committing £250m to wind, solar and wave power schemes. And to ensure a ready market for this energy, the government has ordered that UK electricity suppliers derive 10% of their energy needs from renewable sources by 2010.

Sir John Egan
Marx, Mao, Luther: it's a sign of extraordinary power to have a movement named after you. Within the construction industry, only one man has achieved this, spawning a movement and a whole new vocabulary.

Sir John Egan's 1998 report, Rethinking Construction, is universally known as the Egan report; from this gospel sprang the Egan agenda and today the Eganites are still trying to Eganise the industry with a near-religious zeal.

Now, after three years' absence from construction, Egan is back. He has been appointed to head up the Strategic Forum – the industry's highest-profile organisation and the replacement for the Construction Industry Board.

With construction's loss of a dedicated Whitehall minder after Labour's post-election reshuffle, this body – reporting to energy and industry minister Brian Wilson – will become the highest-level interface between the industry and government. The forum is charged with completing the Eganisation of construction and handling the political hot potato that is safety. Such is Egan's clout that these issues, which ministers had wanted to keep separate, were brought together.

Simultaneously, Egan has taken the helm of a new company that – he hopes – will emerge as a serious force in the industry. He has become chairman of Asite, the e-commerce venture that aims to become the dominant information and transaction hub in European construction.

It remains to be seen whether Egan's e-venture will succeed where so many others have failed, but with heavyweight names such as BAA, Land Securities, Microsoft and Compaq committed to it, the list of Asite's backers is beginning to look like a Who's Who of big business.

Egan, an industrialist who made his name by rescuing carmaker Jaguar in the early 1980s, is a rare figure in the semi-detached construction sector in that his influence extends into unrelated fields of business. He is president of the Institute of Management and has just been appointed deputy chairman of the CBI.

Paul Reichmann
Paul Reichmann is the man who moved London – literally. The reclusive Canadian property tycoon built Canary Wharf in Docklands and shifted the capital's centre of gravity several miles to the east. In doing so, he altered the geography of power not just in London but in Europe. His development has broken the Square Mile's monopoly over the financial services industry and attracted many of the UK's national newspapers.

Despite what politicians say, it is Reichmann's Canary Wharf – not the Millennium Dome – that is proving the catalyst for regeneration along the east Thames corridor. And by providing global megacorps with the massive headquarters they crave, Reichmann has done more than anyone to enhance London's world city status and help it to compete with Continental rivals such as Frankfurt.

Speculative development attracts people willing to take risks to acquire power and money, but Canary Wharf was a startling gamble. In 1988, Reichmann and his brothers Albert and Ralph invested £1bn in a wasteland with almost zero transport infrastructure. They persuaded politicians put in a Tube line and a light railway, yet they had barely completed One Canada Square – the 50-storey tower that has become an icon of corporate potency – before losing it all in the early 1990s property crash.

Paul Reichmann stuck with his vision, buying back the project from the receivers and turning it into a FTSE 100 player valued at £3.5bn.

He exerted his pull on the UK construction industry, importing transatlantic fast-track methods and giving North American firms, from architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to engineer Yolles, a foothold in the market.

And while the debate about tall buildings rages, Reichmann has quietly built the most virile cluster of skyscrapers in the land.

Peter Mason
Amec chief executive Peter Mason is undoubtedly the biggest hitter in UK contracting. During his five-year reign, he has transformed an averagely performing company into a £4bn-turnover juggernaut: the UK's biggest construction group.

Mason is a one of the few industry heads to look beyond the UK – the firm owns a stake in French contractor Spie and bought Canadian engineering design group Agra for £221m last year. His dealmaking has turned Amec into a serious player on the world stage, making it one capable of taking on US giants such as Bechtel.

The quietly spoken Scot also commands almost fawning respect from the powerbrokers in the City – something of a rarity in the battered construction sector.

Sir Stuart Lipton
Before chairing the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, Lipton was already a big hitter thanks to his hugely influential property company Stanhope. But in two years, he has turned CABE into a watchdog with bark and bite, and become a powerbroker himself in the process.

Everyone from Lord Foster down has been sent back to the drawing board by the commission's forthright critiques, but the body has proved astonishingly adept at wielding influence where it really matters: with government. Lipton persuaded the Treasury to rewrite its PFI guidance to include design criteria, and got the prime minister to endorse a campaign for better public buildings.

Ray O'Rourke
As big names queue up to move out of contracting, the man who gave his name to the UK's biggest concrete specialist is moving in. Ray O'Rourke's audacious bid to buy Laing marks a seismic shift in the balance of power in the industry. It is clear that O'Rourke has been in complete control throughout the negotiations; he has the fate of one of the industry's most illustrious brands in the palm of his hands.

O'Rourke's ascent has been a classic tale of hard work, innovation and ruthlessness. But he has about him the mystique of a man destined for power, something his breathtaking move on Laing can only serve to enhance.

Sir Neil Cossons
Power is as much about stopping things happening as it is about making them happen. And by blocking a string of recent skyscraper proposals in London, the English Heritage chairman has developed a reputation as the man who likes to say no. But Cossons' ability to control the capital's skyline – which has left the pro-tower lobby spitting blood – is only one aspect of his far-reaching influence.

His heritage quango also has the right to veto alterations to an astonishing 37,000 listed properties and 8000 conservation areas around the country. And it owns more than 400 of our most potent national symbols, including Stonehenge, Dover Castle and Hadrian's Wall.