Axed Buckingham staff fire off CVs as bust firm counts cost of stadium losses

Staff made redundant by Buckingham’s failure have begun flooding rival contractors with CVs after the firm collapsed into administration yesterday.

Nearly 450 people were shown the door with the appointment of administrator Grant Thornton after a planned fire sale of the firm’s divisions only saw Kier pick up the 180-strong rail business for close to £10m.

Efforts to rescue other parts, including its building, civils and sport and leisure arms, hit the buffers with close to 500 staff now set to be made redundant.

Buckingham had been on the brink of folding since last month when it said it intended to appoint an administrator after racking up “deep losses and interim cash deficits on the three major stadium and arena contracts and a substantial earthworks contract in Coventry”.

One firm told Building it had received upwards of 20 CVs in the past few days as it became apparent Buckingham would not survive.

“There’s some good people there and we need good people,” the boss of one said.

Clients have also begun sounding out contractors about either completing Buckingham’s existing jobs or taking over from the stricken firm where it was in a pre-construction services agreement.

One firm said it had been contacted about some of Buckingham’s logistics and warehouse jobs that it was about to start work on while another said some leisure clients had also been in touch.

Another told Building it had also been contacted by one of the Premier League football clubs Buckingham was building a stand for.

The firm said: “We were asked to have a look but we’ve said no. There’s easier ways to make money.”

The collapse of Buckingham, which was set up in 1987, has left the schemes to build new stands at Liverpool’s Anfield ground and a deal to build the new Riverside stand at Fulham’s Craven Cottage stadium in limbo.

Building understands the damages Buckingham was racking up on the stadium jobs were running into millions of pounds after both schemes were delayed.

Completion of the Anfield job, which involves adding 7,000 seats at the Anfield Road stand, has slipped until October with it originally supposed to have been finished in time for the start of the new Premier League season last month.

Speculation has grown that the damages on the Liverpool job ran into tens of thousands of pounds per seat per week.

“I think the best way Liverpool finish that is if they CM it and manage it themselves,” one source said.

The job at Fulham was meant to have been ready in time for the start of the 2021/22 season but last month the Cottagers admitted fit-out work on bars and restaurants at the stand would not be completed until next year.

In its last set of accounts, for the year to December 2021, Buckingham’s turnover went up 14% to £665m but the firm racked up a £10.7m pre-tax loss with the firm blaming a bust subcontractor and a client that kept changing its mind on a stadium contract, widely believed to be its scheme at Fulham’s ground, sending it to only its second annual pre-tax loss since being set up. The firm had been predicting income this year of around £700m.