LAING'S STORMIN' NORMAN

The original Stormin' Norman made his name in the Gulf War campaign 'desert storm'. Laing's own Stormin' Norman, Norman Haste, has cemented his reputation - in Laing/GTM's campaign on the Second Severn Crossing, where conditions are almost as severe.

Haste is the project director for the Laing/GTM joint venture with a position on the board of Laing Civil Engineering. Seconded to the project at its outset, Haste has run the project with the French joint venture partners, and has built on his already substantial reputation for managing major projects such as Sizewell B power station.

He insists, however, that it is not specific experience that marked him out as the man for he job. 'When you get to my level of development, you look at background and experience. It's the common thread of scale which probably makes me capable and competent to run a project like this.'

'I wouldn't class myself as a career bridge builder or a career power station builder,' he says. 'The construction industry is cyclical. You have to adapt yourself to the projects available.'

The rewards on such a high pressure project, the first privately funded project since the Channel Tunnel, can seem somewhat distant at times. 'There have been times where you feel you might like to be somewhere else, but that hasn't happened very often,' says Haste. So what have the rewards been? 'Either by design or good fortune throughout my career I've always gravitated towards jobs which have a high degree of engineering. That's what interests me,' said Haste.

He has also received the accolades of his workforce and, despite a brief, but deep, division which occurred last year between the jv and the unions, Haste has obviously won their respect. So much so that, on his 50th birthday at the end of last year, the final bridge caisson, all 1500t of it, was dedicated as one enormous concrete birthday cake to him.