Insights Hub

A developer and a law firm say design and build has lost its edge on complex schemes. The contract argument is sound. The harder question is whether clients have the people to carry the risk that comes home.

Mace posted 45 new senior roles this week, over half of all new senior vacancies added across UK construction, mostly associate director grade.

Balfour Beatty's regional civils MD says ECI is how you take risk out of infrastructure schemes. She is right. But the process only works if the right people are in the room on both sides, and nobody puts them on the risk register.

A fortnight of construction headlines, read the way a recruiter reads them, and an honest account of why I am publishing that reading for free instead of keeping it in the drawer.

Durkan Holdings has walked away from contracting entirely after fifty years, blaming regulatory risk rather than a lack of work. What that decision means for where the industry's compliance-savvy senior talent goes next, and what it should tell you about the risk you're paid to carry.

The one-page spec I agree with every client before a name goes out: ten things you can evidence, five you would like, and the questions that test them.

Why retaining older workers, and passing on what they know, has become one of the most pressing questions in UK construction and infrastructure.

Five hospital schemes, five main contractors, one region. The Norwich supplier day will answer which firms can deliver the work. It cannot answer the harder question: which people will lead it.

130 senior construction vacancies are open right now, and 72 of them, well over half, sit with just two contractors: Mace and Balfour Beatty.