A Career in Construction - Part 17

The Holiday Inn, Croydon. Famous in construction legal circles for a judgement about the protection of retention monies. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We should have known at that first meeting in July 1981 what we were in for. For the contractor to be lambasted before we had even put a shovel in the ground was unprecedented then and since. If I remember correctly, Tony Whale had a hard job getting the tender through adjudication at head office. And the MD only relented as Tony was so keen on winning his first big contract. Mike Ellis became resident Project Manager and I got to know the route through south London pretty well.

I was enjoying my role as Divisional Quantity Surveyor. I had a dozen or so surveyors reporting to me, the Division was in reasonably good shape with a number of contracts on the go. As a result, the meetings of the four Divisonal Qs's and Chief QS every month at head office in Dronfield went very well. So the second half of 1981 was a good time. Except nothing is ever perfect, and at Croydon the cracks were beginning to show.

Mike Ellis, having previously managed Cheshunt and then the three phases of White City Industrial Park was involved in the most memorable moment on Croydon when the groundworks foreman entered his office holding a second world war bomb and asked what he wanted doing with it. It had been uncovered during excavations and the digger driver had stupidly not left it where it was. The upshot was that the site was closed, as were all the neighbouring streets while the bomb squad made it safe. It was much later the next day that we were allowed back on site. Needless to say, it made the evening news.

The problems on Croydon escalated during the first half of 1982. There were major problems in the construction of the substructures which the client was unwilling to pay for. We put together a reasonable claim document that we presented to the client and when it was rejected, we were taking legal advice. We were not only losing a lot of money in the groundworks but site overheads were also running at a loss. Some of the other contracts we inherited from the Brian Warren days were also in trouble, especially the apartment complex at Nine Elms and the Alexandra Pavilion in the grounds of Alexandra Palace. Given that it was he that pushed so hard to win the Croydon contract, it was not that big a surprise when Tony Whale decided to leave. On the 2nd June John Marshall, formerly head of Management Contracting at Head Office, took over as Divisional Director, and I was onto boss number six.