‘I’m here as a change agent’ – Bam’s construction boss on Co-op Live, doing the right things and… dealing with snakes

“It’s risk assessment of a kind, if you like.” Kim Sides is recalling the time when she was forced to jam a special stick behind the head of a snake that had found its way into her path.

She was a young girl and the snake in question was a taipan – and for anyone who knows anything about snakes, they are not to be trifled with, given they are widely considered to be among the most venomous in the world.

One bite from the inland taipan has been estimated to release enough venom to kill 100 humans. Sides was six or seven when she stuck the snake stick – which has a V at its apex – behind the taipan’s head.

“You jam it behind the head and call for a parent. You have to respect the snake,” she says.

Sides was living in the tropics of her native Australia at time, where neighbours also included crocodiles, king brown snakes – “they can be a bit grumpy” – and all types of spiders.

I learnt a lot there. Ray [O’Rourke] knows his business better than anybody else. I wish them well

She is unfazed by it all and is a big fan of the huntsman spider – “it eats mosquitos” – which are not deadly to humans but, with a leg span of close to six inches, still has the power to shock. “In Australia, the perception of these things is quite different because you grew up with them,” she adds.

Now 56, Sides has been at Bam, where she is executive director of construction for the UK and Ireland, for the best part of a year having been recruited from a start-up she was helping to run.

A trained lawyer, she previously worked for Multiplex – at the time of its float on the Australian stock exchange in 2003 – as well as a stint at Laing O’Rourke, where she was a general counsel, working alongside Cathal O’Rourke, then in charge of the Australian business, and his father Ray.

“I learnt a lot there,” she says. “Ray knows his business better than anybody else. I wish them well.”

It was then on to Lendlease, where she worked in a commercial role including at its mixed-use Barangaroo development in Sydney – whose roster of project architects includes RSHP, Wilkinson Eyre and Renzo Piano – before swapping construction for the start-up in plastic recycling.

It was this job that took her to the UK four years ago and a house in a village in Oxfordshire. “I’ve never been so warm,” she says of her time here so far.

She puts this down to the central heating and the fact that “in Australia we don’t heat our houses”. But, like most of us, she is not a fan of winter’s slate grey skies. “I feel like we’ve earned the spring this year,” she says.

You best manage risk with someone who sees the world the same way

Sides started at Bam last April, replacing James Wimpenny, who had left in the first few weeks of 2024 after close to 40 years at the firm, having joined it in the mid-1980s when it was known as Higgs & Hill.

It has been part of Dutch-listed Royal Bam Group since 2002, when that firm bought HBG which in turn had bought Higgs & Hill for £28m in 1996. Bam has had its ups and downs recently, but Sides says: “They [Bam] made the decision to keep construction, which is frankly why I’m here. I rarely do status quo. I’m here as a change agent.”

The firm has an initiative called “focus, transform and expand”. Right now, Sides says, the firm is all about the first bit.

“It’s doing it reliably on the right terms and the right projects. We expect to see judicious growth with the right clients, but it’s not a story for 2025.”

Bam’s construction business has a turnover of around £800m and works for 28 key clients, from government agencies including the education and health departments to private sector firms such as Landsec and British Land, where the firm last week signed a deal to carry out a £100m refurbishment of its Broadgate Tower.

Sides says the firm has been undergoing a reset since before covid. “We’re really looking at what work we want to do and what clients we want to work with – not that it looks like a fun project and you kid yourself you can manage the risk. You best manage risk with someone who sees the world the same way.”

The firm, which employs just over 750 people, typically does jobs up to £150m. Above that figure, she says, and it becomes a mega-project.

She wants clients to know where her red lines are. “We won’t do it for less than 3% [margin] on design and build – not interested.”

One-off jobs get similar short shrift. “One-off jobs where you spend the whole time training the client about what’s important… we haven’t got the time to do that in one job. We are managers and identifiers of risk but, if the developer has already maxed out its budget, it doesn’t matter what’s in the contract – that’s just setting yourself up for conflict.

“Setting yourself up so you’re going to be in conflict all the time – people don’t want to come to work to do that. That just burns people out.”

Sides was a few months into her role when Co-op Live blew up. The deal was signed before she arrived and, asked whether the firm would do it again, she says: “Not on those terms.

“We have a very co-operative relationship with that client [US firm Oak View Group]. The client wants to work with us. They’re a great client, but it’s a matter of getting the terms right.”

The job, a state-of-the-art venue in Manchester which hit the headlines last May when a string of concerts were cancelled because it wasn’t ready in time, has cost Bam a lot of money. Tim Leiweke, chief executive of Oak View, admitted last year: “Bam got hit hard, they’ve lost a lot of money on this job, I feel bad for them, they’re doing the best they can.”

Sides doesn’t put a specific figure on the number, but adds: “Our accounts make it reasonably plain it was tens of millions.”

Last month, in its 2024 results announcement, Bam said its UK construction losses hit £40m last year.

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She is reluctant to say there was one specific reason for the problems, but admits: “The subcontractor market in the UK can only safety deliver packages of a certain size.”

In broader terms, she adds: “The biggest risk you’ve got [on jobs] is time. It’s very difficult to get time back if you’ve lost it early. All those [costs of] people working on a job, insurances, premises, computers. The risk goes down once you’re out of the ground, but the clock is already running.”

She says there was never any doubt that Bam would finish Co-op Live. “Being responsible and doing it properly, only the grown-ups do it,” she says.

You can always judge the success of a project by how people have embraced it and Co-op Live has been embraced

Bam is still involved with the job, Sides adds. “A building that complex takes time for a full handover. It takes a long time for full commissioning.”

There is a silver lining, though, Sides says. “Look at Crossrail. When I first got here [in the UK], everyone was talking about how late it was.” Last year it won the Stirling Prize and is the country’s busiest railway. “You can always judge the success of a project by how people have embraced it and Co-op Live has been embraced.”

She says lessons have been learnt for the future and adds: “There’s always optimism bias in the early part of any project. It’s not the contractor saying they don’t want to take any risk – our job is identifying and managing risk – but it’s about what is best managed by the client, local council, local trust.”

Pointedly, she makes the distinction between the returns developers are generating and what contractors earn. “Developers are making 15% year on year on projects. You can’t ask us to take on more risk than they do for 3.5, 4, 5% [margin].”

As well as beefing up margins, she says the industry has more catching up to do on issues such as flexible working. She is proud of an initiative which sees Bam offer paid leave to staff for their child’s first day at school, as well as the carers leave that it gives its employees.

Sides is also one of the few female leaders in a senior position at a contractor in the sector. “There’s a joke in the US,” she says, “that there are more CEOs called Paul than there are females at the top.”

If you haven’t got many women in the room, how many other voices are you missing?

She adds: “Females are a proxy for what inclusion and diversity looks like. If you haven’t got many women in the room, how many other voices are you missing? I don’t think you can say men who are white are not diverse either. Anything that brings a different way of working to a group is welcomed.”

She thinks the market is looking promising, given the government’s pledge to use construction as a battering ram to get the wider UK economy growing. “I tend to be an optimist by nature.” But she warns: “I think the national insurance and minimum wage rises will affect some subcontractors, so we have to support them.”

Her philosophy for business is reasonably simple. “The whole point of this is not about the what, it’s with whom. Then you calibrate the risk and set it up for success so that it’s an enjoyable and engaging process, so that you don’t end up burning people out and you’re not making the client never want to talk to you ever again.”