A Career in Construction - Part 18

It's been a while since Part 17, but now the nights are drawing in, it's time to get back to this memoir. Where was I? John Marshall had just replaced Tony Whale to become boss number six on 2nd June 1982. There was one contract that was to dominate the affairs of the Division over the next year and that was the Holiday Inn, Croydon.

One of the ways we must have undercut all the other contractors who tendered for this contract was to omit the use of a tower crane. I believe our budget relied on the odd visit of a mobile crane. As it turned out, we needed a permanent tower crane and this put an immediate strain on our costs. The problems on site described in Part 17 continued to grow, not helped by the client's two resident Clerk of Works whose job seemed to be to find fault with everything we did. The delay to the contract got worse. In the end it became impossible to gain Practical Completion. The COW's were making out there were too many faults with the building and it eventually all went legal. The company lost a fortune.

If I remember rightly, Mike Ellis had been promoted to Divisional Contracts Manager by Tony Whale and in the early months of John Marshall's regime, the three of us seemed to be in harmony in running the Division. We had won more contracts and these were mainly successful. But my times of ups and downs were not over. John Marshall decided he needed a more experienced surveyor at the top. In January 1983 he brought in Joe Scroxton, an ex president of The Institute of Quantity Surveyors. He was in his late fifties and seemed out of place from the start. We never  knew what he did. He didn't really come out of his office and I continued in my role as before.

So it was a shock when on the 21st October we learnt that John Marshall was leaving to join Mowlem to run their Management Contracting Division ( and later to become their Managing Director). Roger Coombes, a Civil Engineer from one of the company's other regions, took over on 31st October and became boss number seven. John was to be around for at least another month. So he was around when the next big event occurred.

At the end of November, the company decided that it needed to cut costs, particularly in overheads. The directors convened a meeting to decide which members of staff would be made redundant. Apparently when it came to decide between Joe Scroxton and me, it was put to a vote. I heard that John Marshall voted to keep his pal Joe, but was outvoted by among others a director called Alan Burt who I had known from my early days with the company. So Joe was gone and I was to form a great working relationship with Roger Coombes. But predictably this was not to last.

It was only four months later, the beginning of April 1984 that an even bigger reorganisation took place. Gone were the Divisions of Henry Boot Building. The Civil Engineering Divison was amalgamated with the Building division and then split north and south. So Henry Boot Southern Division had an automatic head with Roger Coombes (a Civil Engineer) but two ex Divisonal Quantity Surveyors. The one in charge of all Civils (Ian Simpson) was based in the south and was chosen as the new Southern Divisional QS. I think I was relegated to Managing Surveyor. But as ever, my day to day role didn't change, except I reported to Ian and not Roger.

I can remember it was me who joined Roger on the train to Devon to look at a job at St Mellion Golf Club in Devon who wanted some new lodges built. And I still headed the surveying team at the first site meeting on the huge new shopping complex in Ipswich. But I have only vague recollections of the live contracts at that time: Battersea, Oasis Baths, St Katherine's Dock, Northampton, Thames Water at Sunbury, Winfield House? Notting Hill, IBM, Andover?, Caxton Street, Camberley. I was more involved with Final Accounts (including all the three phases of White City that were very successful - I even found a congratulatory memo from the managing Director) and the Croydon claim, where the forecast loss more than wiped out all the profits from all the other contracts).

But things were never the same. Mike Ellis had left some time ago so when he invited me to join his new company, I had no hesitation in saying yes. I had thoroughly enjoyed my seven years back at Henry Boot despite all the ups and downs. In some ways they were the best years of my working life, particularly in terms of the contracts we undertook. I was very lucky to have joined a fledgling organisation and been given the opportunity to grow my career with an expanding Division.  I did have seven bosses in seven years, but this gave me an insight into different styles of management.

But it was time to find pastures new. I handed over the reins to my deputy, Derek Haynes and said goodbye to the surveying team that I had built at a lovely leaving do on 31st October 1984. The very next day I joined Farrans and that is another story.