The week the conversations all pointed abroad

Welcome back to The Lechley Brief. One theme ran through everything this week: healthcare is where the leadership market is moving, at home and abroad.

From my desk

This week made one thing obvious. Healthcare is where the leadership market is heating up, and it is happening on both sides of the Atlantic at once. On the same days I was talking to a senior leader weighing a move to Toronto or San Francisco, I was watching UK hospital work that has sat in planning for years finally start to move.

The domestic pull is the New Hospital Programme turning from a procurement exercise into actual delivery. The international pull is simpler. The biggest healthcare-build markets are abroad, they pay accordingly, and UK acute-hospital experience travels well. Put those together and the best healthcare leaders suddenly have real optionality.

For anyone building a healthcare team here, that is the thing to sit with. You are no longer competing with the contractor down the road. You are competing with Toronto, San Francisco, and a package that arrives with relocation and equity attached. Worth knowing before you lose someone, not after.

The flip side of the same coin landed in another conversation this week, with one of the most capable young design leaders I know. Early thirties, no intention of moving, completely content. Not because of the money, but because the work is genuinely complex, he has real board exposure, and someone senior is investing in him. That is the whole retention playbook in one person. The leaders you keep are rarely the ones you pay the most. They are the ones you stretch and back.

The week in construction

• The New Hospital Programme has moved into its delivery phase, with the aim of getting all 11 Hospital 2.0 alliance schemes into contract by the end of July. After years of resets, this is the moment the healthcare-build pipeline turns from planning into hiring. (Building Better Healthcare)
• McAlpine and Vinci's Integrated Health Projects JV has been green-lit on the 1.3 billion pound Leighton Hospital replacement in Crewe, one of the first major Hospital 2.0 schemes to move towards main works. Healthcare is now where the tier-one megaprojects sit, and the joint venture is how they are being built. (Construction Enquirer)
• National Highways has cancelled Skanska's 297 million pound A46 Newark bypass contract after nearly four years and is back out to tender. Even consented, funded schemes are not safe, and highways teams are having to plan around a moving target. (Construction News)
• The HS2 reset now hinges on renegotiated contractor deals and an eight billion pound Euston plan, with services between Old Oak Common and Birmingham not expected before 2036. The schedule slips again, but the work does not vanish. It moves right and comes back round as fresh packages. (Construction Enquirer)

People on the move

Simon Kydd has joined Sir Robert McAlpine as Health Sector Managing Director, arriving from Wates, and before that eight years leading WSP's UK healthcare business and a long stint at Balfour Beatty. He succeeds Stuart McArthur, and McAlpine has been open that the hire is about chasing the New Hospital Programme and its healthcare joint venture with Vinci. When a tier-one puts a leader with twenty years in one sector in charge of it, that tells you where it sees the growth. (Construction Enquirer)

Barry Jupp has been promoted to Managing Director for Highways at Kier, stepping up internally from Finance Director of Kier Transportation to lead a business of around 2,000 people. The finance-to-operations route into a divisional lead role is one too many firms overlook when they reach for an external name. (Construction News)

Niki Steel joins Kier's executive committee as Chief Human Resources Officer in August, arriving from IMI. People leadership is quietly becoming a board-level battleground as contractors fight to hold their best talent, and the firms taking it seriously are hiring for it. (New Civil Engineer)

Other areas of interest

The healthcare-abroad question I keep hearing is exactly the sort of thing that gets discussed honestly inside the Lechley Community rather than on LinkedIn. What a relocation actually costs a family, whose overseas package is real and whose is just a headline, which markets genuinely value UK experience. A closed room is where people say the quiet part out loud.

I am opening it up a little this summer. So if you lead, or want to lead, in UK construction and you would value that kind of room, come and join us. It is free, it is candid, and it is growing. You can step inside here.

One useful thing

If you are even loosely weighing an international move, run the boring numbers before the exciting ones. Pension, tax residency, and how your accreditations carry across will decide it more than the job title or the headline salary. I have watched strong leaders reach offer stage and then walk away, because the maths only got done at the end. Do it first.

What I'm working on

My main focus right now is that healthcare-construction leadership search on the other side of the Atlantic. The flagship role is Head of Healthcare for the US west coast, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, leading the sector for a growing healthcare builder. It is the international pull I described at the top, made concrete. The full brief is on the site, and if that is your world, or you are quietly wondering whether your own experience would travel, reply and we will talk.

A few of the other senior searches live on my desk this week:

• Head of Healthcare, San Francisco Bay Area
• Design Director, London, around 160,000 pounds
• Chief People Officer, around 220,000 pounds

You can see everything I am currently running at lechley.com/jobs.