Interviews

Laing O’Rourke’s chief financial officer has denied there are any further skeletons in the company's closet after a legacy Australian job cost the contractor £193m last year. This week, the UK’s largest private contractor reported a £288m loss before tax, driven by provisions, legal costs and a write-off relating to…

Avoiding conflict with the supply chain over cladding remediation, decarbonisation and implementing lean management sit at the top of the priority list for Wates’ chief executive In 1994, Eoghan O’Lionaird was posted to work in the US by the firm he'd joined four years earlier as a graduate trainee. He’d…

Many contractors might cast a jealous glance at a pre-tax profit around the £10m mark. Since the end of July, John Sisk & Son, Morrisroe and Erith have all declared losses. Six other CN100 firms have reported falling margins: McAleer & Rushe, Winvic, RJ McLeod, TSL, O’Halloran & O’Brien, and…

The further education (FE) sector has a role to play in addressing the retrofit skills shortage. But as MidKent College curriculum director Jane Le Poidevin (pictured) says: “The retrofit landscape is so challenging. I think the sector’s a long way from meeting some of its targets, especially in terms of…

Mace chief executive Mark Reynolds has accused the government of being “more interested in small boats than homes for people”. Reynolds, who is co-chair of the government-sponsored Construction Leadership Council alongside business minister Nusrat Ghani, said “the government has lost its love for construction”. In an interview with Construction News…

Skanska’s new chief executive talks to CN about continuity, being a female chief executive and using AI to work smarter, not harder If you switch on the television in the middle of the night, flick to an obscure channel and find yourself watching a repeat of an old programme, you…

L&Q safety boss Pete Paton reflects on a gargantuan effort to make tower blocks safe amid the ‘known unknowns’ of secondary legislation arising from the Building Safety Act Six years after the Grenfell tragedy, the key priority for large housing associations such as London & Quadrant (L&Q) is to ensure…

Demolition contractors should undertake more retrofit work as demand for demolition is likely to decrease, the outgoing chief executive of the sector’s trade association has said. Howard Button (pictured), who has led the National Federation of Demolition Contractors (NFDC) for nearly 20 years, said demolition contractors are well-placed to capitalise…

Caddick Construction managing director Paul Dodsworth talks acquisitions, expansion and the ‘rodeo horse’ of price inflation Caddick Construction managing director Paul Dodsworth may have been in the job for almost nine months, but the “agility” of working at a regional contractor was still springing some surprises, he said. Dodsworth (pictured)…

National Highways is “extremely likely” to stringently assess the performance of suppliers on its new £30bn major framework, the roads body’s head of procurement has said. In an interview with Construction News about the forthcoming Integrated Delivery Framework, Malcolm Dare (pictured) said the client had already started excluding poorly performing…