A Career in Construction - Part 8

Nine years was enough with my first employer George Wimpey. There was little opportunity to advance my career there, so when I saw this advertisement, I immediately sent in an application. Henry Boot had just won a large public housing contract in Peterborough, a long way from the Regional Office in Birmingham. When I was offered the job of Senior Quantity Surveyor after a couple of interviews, this was a huge step up for me. They even paid all my moving expenses including something towards carpets and curtains.

The contract was Bretton 3B, 365 houses for Peterborough Development Corporation, and I was based on a big site complex that had been established. The company had recruited an assistant for me, so there were two of us looking after this massive contract.

In terms of what I was expected to do, I was literally thrown in at the deep end. And at the beginning I was well out of my depth. So it was a case of sink or swim. I think that I gradually started to get on top of things. I had no adverse reports from my managers (Geof Corr was the Regional QS in Birmingham and I learnt more from him in a short time than perhaps anyone else in my career) so it must have been OK.

The contract was interesting from a technical point of view. We were experimenting with metric bricks (two sizes) as well as using normal imperial sizes. One thing that did happen was that we suffered a huge wastage. There was even a security investigation towards the end, involving questioning lorry drivers etc.

The contract lost a lot of money overall. In a way this was lucky for me, as I had to put together a claim for an extension of time together with loss and/or expense. The claim was for £300,000 (in 1972 prices) and was all basically my own work. The company started arbitration proceedings and we started to meet with lawyers. I can remember vividly one momentous day. I accompanied Geoff Corr and the Regional Manager Harry Andrews to a barrister's chambers in Inner Temple. very exciting for me, on my first major contract. We met a youngish barrister called Anthony May ( that was before he became a QC and eventually became Sir Anthony Tristram Kenneth May KB (1991), PC (1998), former President of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court). I expected to be there just to listen, but very quickly Anthony May turned to me and wanted lots of explanations about my claim. I was able to answer all his questions and thoroughly enjoyed the exchange.

There was one fundamental item in the claim and that involved an instruction after we had started on those houses that were to be in imperial brickwork, to leave these and start on the metric units instead. I argued that instead of our bricklayers getting up to speed with normal brickwork, they were thrust immediately into the difficult metric construction. Not the greatest of arguments, but one we could pursue. The claim was resolved on one particular day during the discovery process. I had put together all the files for the Development Corporation team to inspect. On the day they arrived, their head man went into conference with our Regional Manager. Some time later we heard that the claim had been settled at £150,000 with no Liquidated Damages for the overrun. It was considered to be a terrific result.