Why Ray picked Roy

For the last 10 years Roy Adams has been chief executive of the Building Design Partnership (BDP), Europe’s largest architectural and engineering company. There, he oversaw BDP’s growth to over 800 staff across 10 offices and a fee income of £61m per annum.

But this month he becomes the latest in a series of unconventional appointments made by Ray O’Rourke, all part of his stated aim of being the world’s contractor of choice with a turnover of £5bn.

There was Mark Oliver, who joined Laing O’Rourke as a director in February last year from his role as managing director of technology firm BuildOnline. Then Denise Kingsmill joined in the summer to advise on ‘human capital management’. She was formerly deputy chair of the Competition Commission and author of Accounting for People, a best practice guide published in 2003 on reporting human capital data.

Now Roy Adams takes up the new role of executive director of something called the Radical Innovation Group, Laing O’Rourke’s group of strategy teams responsible for inventing new best practice. At BDP the chief executive is elected. Having served five two-year terms, he let it be known he wouldn’t be standing for re-election. He says he wanted a new challenge.

Then he had lunch with O’Rourke. The meeting happened in the first place because BDP was working with Laing O’Rourke on the Paradise Street scheme in Liverpool. The two reportedly discovered a mutual passion for innovation, and in due course Adams was invited to join.

Adams’ remit encompasses everything from health and safety to business development, but what he seems really to want to get his hands on is managing design and design information.

CM interviewed him to find out a little more...

What problems typically beset design now?

The two greatest are change during the process and co-ordinating information between the design professions.

Controlling change has always been an enormous problem. It emanates from the nature of the site, client change, and change from within the design team – usually intended to ‘improve’ the solution, and usually the least palatable source of change for a client.

Design co-ordination is especially problematic on large, complex projects with a large number of professions and where there are on-going discussions with clients. The more customised the building the more difficult this is. People are working on out-of-date information and elements have to be re-worked several times in response to change. Increasingly in the UK it seems that building works are started before the design is complete. This adds to the complexity.

What did BDP do to rectify these problems?

I asked 10 different project architects what a good stage-D design was and I got 10 different answers. As a result of this review we produced a finer-grained set of processes with clear audit points and set down best practice routines and the means of resolving typical problems.

Contractors can be tough, but generally they are honourable people

Roy Adams

What will Laing O’Rourke do?

The proposal is to establish partnering relationships with consultancy firms according to skill and sector expertise. We’ll have real teams that offer a combination of seconded and full-time staff with consultancy back up.

We’ll be able to advise clients, not just on delivering the space they want but also on defining what their needs are.

Does this mean Laing O’Rourke will grow its own architecture division?

No. Organisations whose mainstream business is constructing buildings should not attempt to establish large design offices. They will not attract the number of creative people needed to make the required leap in innovation to achieve and maintain a competitive design edge.

What about production information?

These days specialist contractors and suppliers produce the drawings, descriptions and specifications of materials. Designers and constructors need to work with these specialists to reduce risk and waste by using more standard details and components. There are two kinds of details: standard and lineage. Standard details will come from specialists, like for the standing seam roof or the dry stud wall partition. But lineage details are like those signature features you identify with a particular architect and they will be guarded and developed by the design teams, which seek to establish style and identity.

Adams on architects: The ones who draw the lines on paper always have the most influence on cost. I want to see architects take more responsibility.

On Ray O’Rourke: He is absolutely passionate about building. He has spent most of his working life in a Portakabin.

On contractors in general: PFI has changed the course of where contractors need to go. They need to be much more like commercial developers, but fortunately they don’t have the same instincts. They can be tough but generally they are honourable people.

On leaving BDP: I’ve never thought of myself as a career chief executive.