Coach trip

With construction being such a macho industry, it is remarkable to find someone who is open and enthusiastic about the chance to have a personal coach for two days a month.
Step forward Hartley Moyes. Now six months in to a three-year contract, his main role is to help Birse Construction managing director Rob Adams deliver and implement his medium-term strategic plan for Birse Construction.
"We all have weaknesses," says Adams. "You can never get enough one-to-one quality time to help you improve on them. At my level in the Birse Group, that quality time could be provided by group chief executive Martin Budden or chairman Peter Watson, but they are too busy doing their own jobs. Therefore, you have to turn to outside coaching.
"I'm competent, but whatever level you put me at on the ladder of ability among other construction managing directors, I want to get higher. And as I improve through mentoring it will lift the business and that's the payoff for Birse. I'm preparing a strategic plan, covering three to five years ahead, and Hartley is challenging me on the basis of his previous experiences.
"By April 2004, the end of our financial year, I'll have a robust, well-tested plan containing inputs from both of us," says Adams.
Where did the Birse business mentoring concept come from?
It was the brainchild of Watson and Budden, the Birse top brass.
"My only input to their specification was that a mentor had to be someone I could work with," says Adams. With this in mind, Watson and Budden worked through a long list and, recognising that Adams had to be left with some choice, presented him with a shortlist of three.
"For my part, I looked for experience in areas I didn't have," says Adams. "I also looked for enthusiasm and something that would provide the drive."
From the mentor's viewpoint, what does the process entail? "I have to compare and contrast. I need to take a different view, so it's no good me being a clone of Rob," says Moyes.
"I've never worked in construction and my strength is to look at Birse's opposition and evaluate what it is doing, then take a view on how the construction market will change and how Birse's rivals will shift accordingly," says Moyes.
"The goal is to make Birse a more profitable construction group, one that avoids getting caught up in the boom-bust seasonality of the industry.
"Historically, construction margins have been low to non-existent, but I'm stimulated by this scratching about to make margins of one-point-something percentages; returns that are easily eroded when things go wrong."
Moyes spends two days a month exclusively with Adams. That can be either in the Birse head office, in regional offices or on site. "We are drilling right down all the time," says Moyes. "It is important for me to have the same visibility as Rob and so I have to be exposed to all aspects of Birse's business."
The next step will be for Moyes to meet Birse Construction's major customers. Not surprisingly, he sees this as his one and only mentoring job in the construction sector.
"At Birse, I have access to very confidential information, so I couldn't work with anyone else," he explains.
How did Moyes become a business mentor?
He was an aeronautical engineer with Rolls-Royce before he became a "businessman" in 1970. "I bring experiences from the wider commercial world," he says. "I can broaden the horizon and challenge Rob, pushing him outside his comfort zone."
After a spell in mining, where he designed large machinery, Moyes became director of engineering at cycle manufacturer Raleigh, and was part of the successful launch of the mountain bike concept.
While at Raleigh, the company called in consultancy group McKinsey. "I noticed that when it presented its recommendations, half the things it said were lifted directly from what we'd told it," says Moyes.
"I was head-hunted after that to help with the turnaround of a furniture company called Stag Meredew, based in Letchworth, before moving to the Everest double-glazing group. As operations director there, I was party to another huge financial and structural sort-out."
Moyes was soon knee-deep in a third turnaround, this time with Spring Ram, a door manufacturer racking up losses of £1m a month. After merging the company in to a second business and then selling it all to a Canadian firm, he was offered the position of director of development.
Travelling around the world was fine for a while, but after five years Moyes found the travel too much so he bowed out. He settled in Masham, in north Yorkshire, and waited for the next opportunity - preferably a medium-sized construction-related manufacturing business in the UK.
Things went up a gear when he was contacted by Spearhead, a Leeds-based head-hunting group. It had been commissioned by Birse to find individuals suitable to be mentors and Moyes fitted the bill.
How did Birse Construction's managing director react to the news that he would have a mentor? "I thought it a spot-on idea," says Adams. "What's going on at Birse is that the managing
directors in each of the group's six operating divisions will have business mentoring. The aim is to take each of them up to the next level.
"The objective in this is to look over the hill. I'm the third of the six and following on the heels of Birse Rail and Birse Process, where mentors are already in place."<F0A8>