Martin Ewing leaves McAlpine for McLaren after 22 years

The move of the week: Martin Ewing has left Sir Robert McAlpine after 22 years to run construction management and specialist projects at McLaren. It says more about where the market is heading than any results statement this week, and I come back to why further down.

This week's question: who taught you the most in your first five years?

• My line manager
• Someone on site: a foreman, a trade, a site manager
• Someone outside my firm
• Nobody. I worked it out myself

Vote on this week's question

Vote with one tap, and read my take on Friday: community.lechley.com/question

From my desk

The Operations Manager UK search for an international data centre contractor reached the point that matters this week: the first leaders are now meeting the UK Managing Director. Three weeks from brief to first conversations, on a role where most of the credible people are already running a live hyperscale scheme.

One pattern stands out from the longlist. A striking number of the strongest people learned data centre delivery at ISG before it went into administration two years ago. That business trained a generation of mission-critical operators, and when it failed they scattered across Mace, Laing O'Rourke, clients and specialists. If you are hiring into data centres and not tracking where ISG's people went, you are missing a large part of the market.

The wider week had a clear shape. Vistry is halving its regions and freezing recruitment, while self-employed labour rates hit a record high. The cuts are landing on overhead. The shortage is on site. Those are two different labour markets, and a lot of career decisions go wrong by treating them as one.

Three to teach, three to learn

This month we opened the Exchange on the community site. The idea came from Mike Mansfield at ProAge, and it is deliberately simple: write down three things you could teach someone from a different generation in construction, and three things you would like to learn from one. We match you with people whose answers fit yours and show you why we put you together. You tick the ones you like and offer three times; they pick one. Half an hour on a video call, and that is the whole commitment.

It does not have to be technical. How to price a job without losing money on it counts, and so does how to speak up in a meeting full of people twenty years older than you, or how to plan the last five years before retirement. You do not need to be senior and you do not need to be young. Your contact details are only shared once you both agree to talk.

We ask one question before the conversation and one six weeks after, so we can show whether it works. The anonymised results go into research with Lancaster University and ProAge. If you have twenty years on site, or two, it takes five minutes to join: community.lechley.com/exchange.

The week in construction

• Vistry is cutting its regions from 25 to 12 after a £661m first-half pre-tax loss, which includes a £475m goodwill impairment and a £73m building safety charge. Output drops to about 12,000 homes a year, it is leaving open-market housing in the South East, and £25m of a £50m overhead saving comes from voluntary exits and a recruitment freeze. Thirteen fewer regions means thirteen fewer regional boards. If you sit on one, the conversation about what comes next has probably already started. Source: Construction Enquirer, 24 Sep
• Self-employed construction pay hit a record £1,110 a week in August, up 4.5% on the year, with plumbers at £1,348 and joiners at £1,247, according to Hudson Contract. Hudson puts it down to fewer skilled people, not a booming market. That is the number to remember when a programme slips on labour: it is a supply problem, and money only partly fixes it. Source: Construction Enquirer, 25 Sep
• New-build starts in England rose 20% on the year to 35,910 in the second quarter, with starts through the Building Safety Regulator at 5,758, nearly five times their previous peak. Starts are still 47% below the 2023 high. Gateway 2 is finally releasing high-rise schemes, which means demand for building safety, fire engineering and principal designer experience is about to rise from a low base. Source: Construction Enquirer, 25 Sep
• The A46 Newark Bypass is back on the market at £700m as a design and build job, after the DfT cancelled Skanska's 2022 contract this summer. Registration closes on 13 October, but the Government is also consulting on cancelling the scheme to help fund defence under RIS3. A road that may not be built is still a bid team's autumn. Source: Construction Enquirer, 24 Sep
• Darwin, Portakabin's modular healthcare business, saw turnover fall from £140m to £72m and swung to a £3.2m loss, with headcount down from 200 to 174. It is stepping back from large, complex permanent modular hospital projects after delivery problems. Modular was sold as the answer to NHS capacity; the firms doing it are now choosing which parts they can deliver at a profit. Source: Construction Enquirer, 25 Sep

People on the move

• Martin Ewing has joined McLaren Construction as Divisional Director, Construction Management and Specialist Projects, after 22 years at Sir Robert McAlpine, where he was Director of Operations. He reports to Vince Lydon, who made the same move from McAlpine in 2024. (Source: Construction Enquirer, 21 Sep)
• Vicky Nugus has joined Galliford Try as Strategic Development Director for its Environment business, from Kier, where she was Work Winning Director. A new role aimed squarely at the AMP8 and AMP9 water frameworks. (Source: Construction Enquirer, 24 Sep)
• Martin Quinn joins Stace in October as Director of Commercial Workspace, after nearly 20 years at Great Portland Estates, latterly as Head of Project Delivery. (Source: Building, 23 Sep)

Other areas of interest

Construction management is having a moment again. In Building this week, a developer and a law firm argued that the single point of responsibility in design and build is increasingly illusory: with fewer tier-one contractors willing to carry the risk after a run of insolvencies, the lump sum has become a negotiation rather than a guarantee. Under construction management, they say, around 70% of packages by value are let before breaking ground.

The same week, McLaren hired a 22-year McAlpine operations director to run its construction management division. That is not a coincidence. If more clients go back to CM, the scarce people are not contractors' commercial teams, they are client-side leaders who can hold dozens of trade contracts without a main contractor to hide behind. I set out what that asks of the client in Construction management puts the client back in charge.

New on the community

• Construction management puts the client back in charge. Is the client ready? (Insights)
• Mace posts 45 senior roles in a week (Insights)
• Vistry cuts regions from 25 to 12 after £661m loss (News)
• Avtar Construction collapse: £6m owed, no payout expected (News)

All of it free at community.lechley.com.

One useful thing

If you are talking to a firm that has just restructured, ask one question before you talk about the package: when was the headcount plan for your part of the business last signed off? A recruitment freeze announced alongside a reset usually outlasts the headlines, and a role that was approved before the restructure is not always a role that survives it. A clear, recent answer is a good sign. A vague one tells you to slow down.

What I'm working on

Week four 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. First conversations are under way, and there is still room for the right person. If you have run multi-project mission-critical delivery in the UK, or you know who has, I would value the conversation.