Three to teach, three to learn

This week the Brief leads with something that is not a job.

From my desk

I spent Friday morning with Mike Mansfield. He runs a charity called ProAge from Amsterdam and has spent the last stretch working with employers around Morecambe Bay on a problem construction has never solved: what happens to everything a person knows in the fifteen years before they stop working. In most firms the answer is that it leaves the building with them.

Mike ran an experiment with a pharmaceutical company. Everyone wrote down three things they could teach someone from another generation and three things they wanted to learn, then got matched for a coffee. Almost nobody wrote anything technical. It was how to handle people, how to handle life, how to handle a phone.

We have put the same thing on the community site. Three to teach, three to learn, one half hour, no diary tennis. It is live now at community.lechley.com/exchange and it is free. If you have twenty years on site and you would like to know what a graduate actually worries about, or you are three years in and want half an hour with someone who has run a job that went wrong, that is what it is for.

One other thing about the week. Two contractors went under while, in the same seven days, public bodies opened work worth billions between them. That is not a contradiction, it is what this market looks like close up: money committing to frameworks and planning approvals in one column, firms with too little cash cushion failing in the next. Before you ask what a role pays, work out which stage of the pipeline you would be exposed to. I have set out what moved and what it means in the week in five minutes.

The week in construction

• Universal named 23 firms for its £5bn Bedford resort, among them Bovis, Galliford Try, Morgan Sindall, Careys, Sir Robert McAlpine, Wates and Winvic, with Arcadis, Mott MacDonald, Arup, Buro Happold and AtkinsRéalis on the consultancy side. Opening is scheduled for 2031, with around 20,000 construction jobs across the build. This is the first named list on a scheme that runs for five years, and the firms on it staff up from a standing start. If you want a decade of work in one postcode, watch this one. Source: Construction News, 15 Sep
• Twenty contractors took places on the £3bn Constructing West Midlands framework, which starts on 28 September and can run to 2032. Galliford Try, Morgan Sindall and Willmott Dixon renewed on the £1.3bn top lot; Kier, Vinci and Wates won places for the first time. Thirty six bids went in across three lots and sixteen lost. A first place on a framework means a regional team that has to exist by the end of the month. Look at the three new names for hiring, and at the sixteen who missed out for people who will soon be looking. Source: Construction Enquirer, 17 Sep
• Administrators at Interpath reported that Torsion Construction went down owing about £20m to unsecured creditors, including roughly £15.7m to trade creditors, with no recovery expected. Torsion grew fast and then could not carry the cost of it. When you are weighing an offer, the growth line in the accounts is not the number that protects you; the cash position is. Source: Construction News, 17 Sep
• Transport Scotland shortlisted five bidders for the £1.94bn A9 dualling framework covering the remaining 58 miles between Perth and Inverness: Balfour Beatty and Morrison Construction as a joint venture, Graham, Hochtief, Kier and Wills Bros. Framework partners are due to be appointed before the end of the year, with the programme finishing by 2035. Five bidders, two lots, and a decade of Scottish civils behind it. Preconstruction and bid teams at all five will be busy through the autumn. Source: New Civil Engineer, 16 Sep
• Barratt Redrow completed 17,667 homes in the year to June, up 5%, on revenue of about £6.06bn, but trimmed its 2027 guidance to 17,500 to 17,900 homes on the back of planning delays and fewer sales outlets. Completions up, guidance down, and the reason is planning rather than demand. If you are in housebuilding, the constraint on your next two years sits with the planning system, not the sales office. Source: Barratt Redrow, 17 Sep

People on the move

• Mark Wolverson has rejoined Willmott Dixon as delivery director for the North East, from Wates, where he was Operations Director in the region. He spent 14 years at Willmott Dixon before leaving in 2024, and picks up around £58m of defence, civic, transport and education work. (Source: Construction Enquirer, 18 Sep)
• Simon Gorski has joined Stepnell as Managing Director of its construction arm, from Lendlease. A tier-one operator moving to a privately owned regional contractor is worth noticing; it usually says something about where the interesting work is. (Source: Construction News, 16 Sep)
• Nima Nicolas Aase has been appointed Regional Managing Director for Europe at Turner & Townsend, moving up from managing director for the Nordics. He now leads more than 2,300 people across 50 offices in 16 countries. (Source: Turner & Townsend)

Other areas of interest

The problem Mike is working on is not a construction problem, it is a national one. Inactivity among 50 to 64 year olds climbed from 25.5% in early 2020 to 27.2% by 2023, and the reason matters: in your fifties the most common answer is health, in your sixties it is retirement. These people did not fail to find work. They stopped looking, and most do not come back. (Institute for Fiscal Studies)

For construction that lands harder than for most sectors, because the knowledge is not written down. A quantity surveyor with thirty years of final accounts behind him carries a library nobody has ever typed up. If your firm has no way for that person to work three days and teach on the fourth, you are not managing an ageing workforce, you are waiting for it to leave.

New on the community

• Construction isn't short of applicants. It loses them. (Thoughts) What happens to the 1,900 people who do not get one of the 100 apprenticeships.
• Who tells your chief executive they are wrong? (Thoughts) On what a business loses when the honest voice in the room retires.
• External hires aren't braver. They're just easier to justify. (Thoughts) The real reason boards go outside.
• What actually got you your last promotion? (Weekly question) 29 votes, and my take published on Friday.

All of it free at community.lechley.com.

One useful thing

There is now a running list of every UK construction insolvency we have covered since August, month by month, with what each one means for the firms owed money and the people looking for work. Worth ten minutes before you take on a new main contractor, or before you accept an offer from one. There is a second list for the AMP8 framework awards by water company, if that is your market.

What I'm working on

Week three of the Operations Manager UK appointment for an international main contractor delivering data centres for hyperscale clients. The role reports to the UK Managing Director, leads Project Directors across three to five schemes nationally, and grows with a secured pipeline heading towards £300m to £400m a year. Retained exclusively with Lechley. The list of leaders with delivered UK hyperscale experience is short and most of them are busy, which is the whole point of the search. If you are on it, or you know who is, I would value the conversation.