Eleven hospitals signed. Now the hiring starts.

From my desk

This week was wall to wall calls: new introductions, two retained search conversations, and a handful of catch ups with people building the tools recruiters run on. The one that stayed with me was about hospital construction. A healthcare staffing specialist and I compared notes on what happens when a hospital programme moves from planning to delivery, and how the construction and clinical talent markets end up chasing the same postcodes at the same time.

The next day that conversation stopped being hypothetical. On Thursday the New Hospital Programme signed deals for its first eleven hospitals under the £37bn scheme. Signed agreements mean mobilisation, and mobilisation means people. The contractors on that list will be lifting preconstruction leads, healthcare framework directors and planners out of a market that does not have spares.

If your patch is healthcare construction, the next six months will set the pecking order for the next six years.

The week in construction

• Eleven hospitals, signed. Contractors signed long term agreements to deliver the first eleven hospitals under the £37bn New Hospital Programme (Construction News). Frameworks win headlines; signatures start hiring. Expect delivery and preconstruction appointments from every name on that list before Christmas.
• Morgan Sindall posts a record half. Adjusted pre tax profit up 21 per cent to £116.1m on revenue of £2.56bn, with construction operating profit up nearly 50 per cent and medium term targets raised (Construction Enquirer). Proof that disciplined bidding beats turnover chasing, and the best commercial people keep gravitating to the balance sheets that show it.
• McLaughlin & Harvey lands £100m Rolls-Royce job. The contractor will build a combat air research and manufacturing facility in Bristol (Construction News). Defence is quietly becoming one of the strongest order books in UK construction, and advanced manufacturing facility experience is now a premium CV line.
• SMR consenting gets under way. Great British Energy Nuclear appointed Jacobs, with Quod, to lead planning and consenting for its small modular reactor programme, starting at Gwyndod (Wylfa) and Oldbury (New Civil Engineer). Consenting comes first, construction later; planning and consents specialists get hired years before the first pour.

People on the move

• Kevin Grace joins Wates Construction as Commercial Director for London, from Mace, where he was commercial lead on the £1.1bn British Library extension. Part of a wider London leadership reset under managing director George Mosey.
• Steve Lynn steps up to Regional Director for Kier Construction's Northern region, covering Yorkshire and the North East, succeeding Dan Doherty, who has retired.
• Katherine Mackintosh has been named Managing Director of Robertson's property arm.
• David Grey joins The Shore Group as Group Delivery Director.

Other areas of interest

Our moves tracker logged more than 40 senior appointments across construction and infrastructure in the second half of July alone. The pattern behind the volume is regional leadership resets. Wates rebuilt its London top table, Kier refreshed its Northern region, Robertson restructured its property arm, and Persimmon pulled a construction director across from Vistry.

Read that as boards positioning delivery leadership before workload lands, not as churn. Every one of those appointments also leaves a chair empty somewhere. If you are hiring, the backfill market over the next quarter will be the busiest it has been all year.

One more from me. The other end of the pipeline matters just as much as the boardroom. This week I wrote about why construction's 250,000 person shortfall is a status problem rather than a supply problem, and what the industry has to do to earn the next generation: The Hard Hat and Graduation Gap.

One useful thing

Use the New Hospital Programme list of eleven as a filter. If you lead in healthcare construction, check whether your employer, or the employer you are considering, is on it. Long term programme deals decide where careers compound; a five year framework seat is worth more than a one project pay rise.

What I'm working on

Right now I am running a senior estimator search for a well established civil engineering contractor in the North West. Strong pipeline of framework and infrastructure work, proper backing, and a leadership team that wants an estimator who shapes bids rather than just prices them. If that is your world, or you know whose world it is, reply to this email.