Construction:the power list

19 Peter Lobban, chief executive, CITB-ConstructionSkills

The CITB often gets a tough press, perhaps not surprisingly as the last major industry to still draw a compulsory levy, but it remains the one construction-wide organisation that consistently sends out a positive message to the wider world, promoting the industry as a rewarding place to work.

Lobban has been at the forefront of that. He was credited with the ‘sex and booze’ advertising campaign of five years ago, which was widely praised, and credited with a surge of interest in construction careers.

With the Olympics looming, Lobban and the CITB have a golden opportunity to show construction can offer a sexy, exciting career. Will they make the most of it?

20 John Rouse chief executive, Housing Corporation

The Housing Corporation has been a quango in decline of late, losing responsibility for inspecting housing associations to the Audit Commission, but it is still in charge of doling out the cash in what is one of construction’s biggest boom markets, and retains responsibility for delivering the 200,000 homes of John Prescott’s sustainable communities plan.

Rouse is also a bright, young and well-connected chief executive, but he will have to demonstrate that there is still a role for the corporation. It will be a tough job, and he will need his renowned diplomatic skills to balance the demands of housing associations and the commercial housebuilders.

Rick Willmott, chief executive, Willmott Dixon

In an industry often criticised for not respecting its people enough, Willmott is a contractor boss who not only talks the talk, he walks the walk.

The only chief executive of a family-owned contractor to feature in our list, Willmott has made Respect for People central to the way he runs his business. The benefits and staff support available make it one of the happiest contractors in the industry.

He has also campaigned hard for the industry on its graduate recruitment problem, meeting former construction minister Brian Wilson to discuss the idea of scrapping tuition fees for construction-related degrees.

Not that recruiting has been a problem for Willmott Dixon. After winning last year’s CJ Best Place to Work in Construction award, Willmott Dixon opened a facility on its website allowing people interested in working at the firm to post their CVs. It’s already received more than 500.

And to prove that Respect for People can go hand in hand with a profitable business, Willmott Dixon’s results last year produced a record profit of more than £10m, a margin of 2.5%.

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17 Professor Rudi Klein, chief executive, Specialist Engineering Group

No one has campaigned harder on the issue of construction supply chain payment than Professor Klein. Called to the bar in 1978, he lectured in law at South Bank before becoming chief executive of the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group in 1993. There, he has worked tirelessly to represent the legal and contractual interests of the specialists, and has spoken to the House of Commons on the practice of retentions.

So far, the response from central government to the idea of outlawing retentions has been distinctly lukewarm, but Klein is unlikely to let the issue drop yet.

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Keith Blanshard, director, Yorkon

24 Ian Tyler, chief executive, Balfour Beatty

Balfour Beatty has the highest construction turnover of any UK contractor, largely due to 10 years of both organic and acquisitive growth under Tyler’s predecessor, Mike Welton.

Tyler, formerly finance director, was seen as the natural successor to Welton, and is undoubtedly a steady hand on the tiller. But does he have the growth ambitions that Welton had?

Tyler pondered an 11th hour bid to steal Mowlem from under Carillion’s nose, but in the end thought better of it.

The deal would have put some serious daylight between Balfour and the rest of the industry – will Tyler come to regret not going for it?

23John Spanswick, chief executive, Bovis Lend Lease (Eur)

Spanswick has won enormous respect for his commitment to raising site safety since being taking the reins at Bovis, and the contractor’s Incident & Injury Free programme is widely regarded as a benchmark for the industry.

More recently, he has made safety a key pillar of his mission statement as chairman of the Major Contractors Group. It is a laudable position to take. But whether it proves sufficiently enticing to lure former members of the MCG back into the fold remains to be seen.

21Keith Clarke, chief executive, Atkins

Clarke has huge experience in the construction industry, both on the contractor side, with Trafalgar House and then Kvaerner, and now with Atkins.

The former consulting engineer transformed itself into the largest of the new breed of multi-disciplinary design and support services consultancies, and has influence the length and breadth of the supply chain. After some major wobbles following the implementation of its group IT software system, Atkins has sailed into calmer waters under Clarke.

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As boss of Shepherd subsidiary Yorkon, Blanshard has been the industry’s most vocal champion of offsite technology.

He has picked up some pretty good references too.

Tesco and McDonalds are among the blue-chip clients that regularly use Yorkon, while more recently, the firm has successfully delivered more complex healthcare projects.

It also provided one of the exemplar designs for Building Schools for the Future.

Modular construction is still a tiny fraction of the whole industry, however, as demand continues to grow, Blanshard says he will grow Yorkon to meet it.

“Clients shouldn’t worry about our ability to deliver – if the demand is there, I will provide the capacity,” he told Contract Journal in a recent interview.

Lord Rogers, chairman, Richard Rogers Partnership

30 Sir Peter Mason, chief executive, Amec

Once, Mason would probably have been regarded as the most influential construction boss in the land – that he’s not is a reflection of the current uncertainty over Amec’s direction.

Does Mason still want to be a major construction player? Would he prefer to be a project manager? Is he happier in the offshore and gas sectors? Will he break the business up?

The uncertainty was borne out by internal turmoil that saw the departure of construction boss Steve Bowcott last year, and the sale of its rail business AmecSpie.

Amec still has a big enough name and a good enough reputation to carry plenty of weight in the industry, but at the moment it appears to be caught between several stools.

29 Garvis Snook, chief executive, Rok

Snook is one of the new breed of construction chief execs. He burst on to the scene six years ago with sleepy West Country contractor EBC, promising a fresh approach to construction that would turn the business into a major national player.

One of his earliest moves was to rename the business Rok, quite a radical move in an industry still dominated by family names, but Snook wanted a powerful brand to be central to his offering.

“If customers enjoy the construction experience, then they will return to your brand again,” he has said.

Rok has acquired developer Rockeagle and social housing contractor Llewellyn on the way to fulfilling Snook’s ambitions, and is now a £500m+ business.

28 Vice Admiral Peter Dunt, chief executive, Defence Estates

DE is one of construction’s biggest clients, yet its record has been scarred by tortuous procurement processes, stifling bureaucracy, and 11th-hour policy u-turns.

Chief executive Dunt told CJ in November that DE had worked hard to improve its track record. He pointed to a 6% improvement after a year’s monitoring the first regional Prime contract in Scotland, and hopes some the contractors in DE’s new suppliers association will work together to share best practice.

With PFI the position is less clear. The interminable Allenby-Connaught accommodation PFI has still not closed, and Dunt admits not all its PFI schemes have gone well.

Can Dunt provide a clearer position on DE’s procurement policy – or will contractors have to accept that a degree of confusion comes with the territory if you choose to work for the MoD?

Rogers is the first of two architects in our Power Player list. Both are included because they have proved far more successful at winning the sympathy of the public and politicians than contractors have.

Rogers was chosen as chairman of the Urban Task Force, and his two reports have done much to promote the idea that better designed buildings can help contribute towards a more civilised society. The regeneration of the centres of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool has been in part inspired by Rogers’ values.

He has ensured that design is high on the agenda when major new developments, like the Thames Gateway regeneration, are discussed. Though now 72, he retains a major influence on planning policies, and is Ken Livingstone’s principal architectural adviser.

Robert Napier, chief executive, World Wildlife Fund

The environmental lobby has enjoyed a growing influence on construction in recent years, with activists successfully forcing contractors to scrutinise the ethics of their supply chain more closely.

Napier represents the most sophisticated and – in the business community – respected member of that lobby. And he is no hippy amateur. Before joining the WWF in 1999, Napier worked in construction for 16 years with Redland, latterly as chief executive.

After launching its One Million Sustainable Homes campaign, principally in response to John Prescott’s Sustainable Communities plan, the WWF was invited on to the steering committee of the ODPM’s Code for Sustainable Buildings.

But Napier resigned in disgust at Christmas, saying “he could no longer sanction what the ODPM was producing”.

It’s unlikely he will give up on the cause though.

14 Duncan Davidson chairman, Persimmon Homes

The founder of Persimmon, and one of the richest men in Britain, Duncan Davidson has turned the housebuilder into the UK’s biggest.

He moved up from chief executive to chairman last year, but remains an influential figure in the wider housebuilding industry.

How positive an influence is open to question. Housebuilders return profits that contractors can only dream of, and sit on huge landbanks, yet the number of new homes built each year is currently at record lows.

The industry points the finger at the planning system, while its critics grumble at the slow pace with which housebuilders actually construct new homes, its reluctance to embrace innovations like offsite technology, and accuse some of sitting on their landbanks until new infrastructure boosts the land value.

Despite the efforts of John Prescott, it is difficult to see housebuilders like Davidson changing in the immediate future. With those kinds of profit margins, their view is almost certainly, ‘it ain’t broke, so why fix it?’

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Bob Blackman, national secretary for construction, TGWU; and Alan Ritchie, general secretary, UCATT

The noughties have been an active decade for the unions. Industrial disputes have flared up on many flagship schemes, most recently Wembley and T5, where conflict between rival unions fanned the flames of industrial unrest.

Uncertainty currently surrounds the Major Projects Agreement and the steel sector’s NAECI agreement.

In the middle of all this are Bob Blackman and Alan Ritchie. The long-serving Blackman is regarded as a conciliator, while Ritchie, who replaced the highly respected George Brumwell in 2004, is a lesser known quantity.

Ahead of the Olympics, both men will be aware of the powerful position construction’s unions suddenly occupy once more. T5 proved that attempting to strike a ground-breaking pay deal with one union’s workers does not necessarily mean a happy workforce. The Olympics is one deadline that cannot be missed – as the unions will be only too aware.

15 Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London

Once a symbol of Labour’s hard left, Red Ken is these days showing a few blue tinges – although he is unafraid of courting controversy, as was demonstrated during his recent spat with the Evening Standard newspaper.

Livingstone was elected London mayor seven years ago, and his determination to overhaul the capital’s creaking infrastructure has since brought him into direct contact – and often confrontation – with the construction industry.

The most obvious example was his long-running battle, in partnership with TfL boss Bob Kiley, to prevent the Tube PPP from going through – which he lost.

Lately though, Livingstone’s policies are having a more positive effect on the industry. His use of the bonds market has made plans for a series of infrastructure projects – including a Thames Gateway crossing and Crossrail – come much closer to reality.

Bonds have already been used to raise funds for other Tube infrastructure work outside of the PPP.

Livingstone’s planning policies are also having an important influence on construction. His insistence on at least 35% social housing units in new developments has posed a few awkward questions for housebuilders, and he has made himself champion of tall buildings.

With huge development planned on his doorstep in the Thames Gateway, Livingstone’s influence on construction is likely to continue – at least as long as he stays in office.

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