Mace rejigs senior management team with construction head leaving and new chief executive appointed

Mace is rejigging its senior management team which will see the firm’s construction head leave, a new boss appointed to lead its consult business and group deputy chief Jason Millett promoted to the top role next January with Mark Reynolds becoming executive chairman.

The first of the changes will be made in the coming weeks when Gareth Lewis ends a near 30-year association with the firm at the beginning of July.

Lewis, who has been at Mace 27 years, will be replaced by Andrew Jackson, currently the chief operating officer for its construction business. Jackson arrived at the firm in 2015 from Laing O’Rourke after originally joining John Laing as a trainee in the late 1990s.

Paying tribute to Lewis, Reynolds said: “Gareth and the team have built construct in to the strongest London contracting business over the best part of 20 years.”

Millett, who has led the consult business for the past five years, will be replaced in the role at the beginning of July by Davendra Dabasia who has been COO since the start of last year, having joined the firm from Lendlease in 2007.

And Millett, currently deputy chief executive of the group, will take over as chief executive at the start of next year with incumbent Reynolds moving into an executive chairman’s role.

Mace said it wants revenue from its consult business, expected to be around £700m this year, to be over the £1bn mark by 2030 with the division eyeing income of £1.2bn at that point.

Consult currently employs around 5,500 people across the globe on top of the 1,850 employed by construct with Millett saying the group’s overall employee number could reach 10,000 by 2030.

Construction will still be the firm’s biggest business by revenue at the start of the next decade with income of around £2.4bn.

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Reynolds admitted margins at consult were much better than construct but said the firm was not about to abandon contracting.

“We have a unique model between construct and consult. Our construction knowledge on things like supply chain, contract administration, offsite, data, has helped the firm win global delivery partner programmes.”

Mace is also appointing its first group non-executives who will be headed by Alison Nimmo, a director of its advisory group and former chief executive of the Crown Estate, who will serve as senior independent director.

Other non-executives include Nina Bjornstad, a member of the board of Scandinavian airline SAS, Eric Hageman, the chief financial officer of Swedish telecoms firm Telia and John Coghlan, a non-executive at water firm Severn Trent. The four will work two days a month.