Young joins Warings as defence division head

Ian Young has joined Warings as manager of its defence works division. He was previously with project managers for the Ministry of Defence, White Young Green.

Len Salter, MD at Warings, said: "The MOD, in its prime contracting plan, is looking for a service that will provide everything from concept and design through the construction progress and on, after that phase, to aftercare.

"Warings is pretty good at design and management, and running the following FM, but we recognised that we didn't have the in-house capability to deal with up-front feasibility, initial design and evaluation. We needed to get the right people on board. We poached Ian to get things rolling for us."

The MOD confirmed in October that it will be letting 18 prime contracts of between £100 million and £200 million each.

The work is expected to offer returns of up to 5 per cent and long-term revenue streams. Warings is likely to join the list.

Clive Cain, director of defence works at MOD, has invited Warings to a place on its Building Down Barriers second generation team, which will focus on supply chain management.

Also on the team are Amec, Laing, Tilbury Douglas, Christiani and Nielsen, Kvaerner and Birse. "We have just done a £14 million project for the MoD on two sites - Odiham in Hampshire and Benson in Oxfordshire. It took just 10 months," said Salter.

"Half the value was in prefabricated modules. You couldn't have got the bricklayers to do it conventionally in that time-frame." Young has a supply chain in place for the first of four construction projects for a client who is looking for this groundbreaking approach.

In the team are an M&E subcontractor, external works package subcontractor, cladding specialist and designer. "This was all done up-front before we were invited to tender," said Young. "At the pre-document meeting they offered us a briefing pack and at that stage we formed partners."