“No, not really.” Skanska UK chief executive Greg Craig is talking about whether he was surprised when Carillion, his former employer, went bust.

“It wasn’t the biggest surprise, particularly after the first massive writedown. A number of contractors have had writedowns, but nothing that big. And you always wonder if there’s a follow-up.”

There was. Carillion’s initial £845m writedown, made last July, got worse just a couple of months later when the firm turned in a £1.2bn loss for the first half of 2017. For 55-year-old Craig, who spent six years at the business before joining Skanska in 2003, there is one positive from the disaster. “It has knocked on the head the perception that if you want to transfer lots of risk, go find a big contractor. There has been far too much of that going on from clients and advisers. No contractor is too big to fail.”

‘A skill our managers need is the ability to work out whether we need to intervene or not. then you get people taking action at an earlier point’

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