“I decided to set up an anti-management consulting group”

Colin Wyatt has been having nightmares. “I keep dreaming there’s a train hurtling towards me and it’s full of the staff at Gardiner & Theobald’s consulting group,” he confesses. Wyatt retires this week as senior partner and, having been there since 1968, he is slightly anxious about filling his days. But this self-doubt seems out of character.

Wyatt began his career at G&T as a QS, specialising in steel and power works. When these jobs dried up during the early 1990s recession, he launched a form of management consulting group within G&T. This guaranteed he would be retained by the firm, despite times being tough, and it continues to thrive. “When I joined G&T in ’68, the perception was that only public schoolboys got to the top of that kind of firm, but I’ve disproved that theory,” he says.

Wyatt’s favourite job was the £2bn Torness nuclear power station on Scotland’s east coast. “The work lasted from 1979 to 1987, there were 60,000 drawings and not a single claim.”

He got Torness after being sent to Scunthorpe in 1970 for his first big contract, the Anchor Project steelworks. While there, he set up a permanent Scunthorpe office, which he continued to manage throughout his career.

By the late 1980s, things had changed, however. “G&T had stopped doing steelworks and power stations, and I found myself back in London with nothing to do,” he remembers.

Wyatt’s response was to create a new role for himself. “People were talking about management consultancy at that time,” he says with a twinge of disdain, “so I decided to set up an anti-management consulting group.” It comprised a team of four, offering low-profile, inexpensive advice to senior people in major companies, in the hope this would lead to more significant contracts from them later. This contrasted with the high-profile, costly advice being touted by legal and accounting firms, Wyatt explains.

The industry spends too long talking about methods of procurement. QSs should focus on how their team gets on and handling the client

The team of four came to be known as the Management Consulting Group, despite Wyatt’s protests and, later, the Consulting Group. It had 150 staff after five years and, according to Wyatt, it continues to grow. He says the establishment and expansion of G&T’s consulting job shows how the role of the QS has changed during the past three decades. “When I joined the construction industry, architects reigned supreme. Now I think the industry spends too long talking about methods of procurement. QSs should focus on how their team gets on and handling the client.”

Wyatt adds he was always told that a QS should monitor costs rather than control them, but he believes that G&T is now in the business of cost control – an evolution which began, unsurprisingly, at Torness.

He admits, “Not all claims can be avoided, but normally you can get a lower settlement by dealing with problems as they arise rather than four years later, at the end of the job.”

Wyatt has also worked on a number of transport projects. These include the £700m flue gas desulphurisation project at Drax Power Station, Docklands Light Railway, Ashford International Passenger Station, Birmingham Northern Relief Road, various commissions for London Underground, and a number of port and dock improvement schemes.

He also has further projects planned for his retirement, including launching a programme to help the elderly get the best out of the internet, creating an electronic photographic guidebook, and buying a boat. It would seem Wyatt’s worries about filling his days are unfounded.