Speaker from Paul Harris from Balfour Beatty Plc

Paul Harris is a preconstruction manager for Balfour Beatty Plc (BB). He explained that this is a new job that the company have created in the last 10 years. BB are the biggest contactor in country with a turnover of £9 billion. They operate in the UK, America and Hong Kong mainly doing civil engineering.

Paul’s career has been 30 years working up the business dealing with such varied projects as Hong Kong mass transit, work in the water, nuclear and wind farm industries. A lot of the work is for government & local government. Because these bodies are being financially constrained, they are now having to outsource the majority of their services. This means that contractors like BB now need to get involved much earlier as they now have to actually design the scheme which the authorities used to do in house. They now turn down as much work as take on as they don't get involved in competitive bidding. Instead they form a relationship with the customer and undertake all the competitive tendering on behalf of the customer. Hence need for preconstruction work which takes almost twice as long as the actual building civil engineering build.

Paul said that the original job specification from the customer can be as basic as being given 2 points on a map and the requirement to build a road between them. This used to be driven by cheapest quote but now BB had become good friends with client in a collaborative relationship and refuse to get in a bidding war.

The new working environment is now considerably different than ten years ago. There is no receptionist in the office, nobody has their own desk rather they use hot decking. The main forms of contact are now mobile phone or email nobody ever uses the landline. Even Managing Director doesn't have an office leading to a much more egalitarian atmosphere. 

Apprenticeship are now making a big comeback but rather than starting at 16 people are now employed at 18 or as a graduate at 21. The company sponsors a lot of 18 year old through university. The do a longer work release degree and then graduate at 23. They can then go on to study as a fellow the Institute of Civil Engineers which would take them to the age of 25. Such apprentices are tied to BB until age 27 in recompense for their sponsorship but there is a great demand for positions because of the high university tuition fees. This allows BB to choose the cream of the crop. There are now a significant number of females entering civil engineering which is a much more white collar job than previously.