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‘Understand what value means to employees’ New Rider Levett Bucknall CEO Andrew Reynolds says a motivated workforce, armed with skills for a rapidly changing construction industry, is key to the consultant’s future. Neil Gerrard spoke to him
Independently owned consultant Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB) is dreaming big under the leadership of newly installed chief executive Andrew Reynolds. Reynolds took the helm of the company late last year, at the same time that RLB announced it wanted to grow turnover to £150m over the next 10 years. It has made a promising start. Profit at the firm more than doubled for the year to 30 April 2019, at £7.3m, while turnover rose to £81.7m, from £58.7m the year before. Perhaps it all has something to do with RLB’s official company purpose, which is: “Have fun, feel valued, and make money, forever.” Reynolds admits that it sounds rather “fluffy” but there is a very serious intent behind it. “For us, as a business that is 100% employee-owned, it means that it is very important that our employees feel that they are working in an environment where they are enjoying what they are doing and feeling valued, that they are being well rewarded, and they can see their career growing in the long term.
“We really need to understand what value means to them. We believe that’s the starting point from which to build a great workforce,” he says. Reynolds certainly seems to be a good example of the approach. Although only recently appointed chief executive, he has been with the business for 19 years. And in fact, more than 20% of the people working in the business have been employed by RLB for more than 10 years. Nonetheless, Reynolds sees significant change on the horizon, not just in the way that the company operates as it grows, but also in the make-up of the workforce. The skills that RLB needs are shifting as construction embraces its digital future, and Reynolds asserts that the main focus is currently on BIM and analytics. Its non-network digital team – those people not working within normal IT functions – is now more than 20 people, and RLB has just appointed its first chief digital officer in Matt Sharp. “A n o r g a n i s a t i o n l i k e o u r s accumulates a huge wealth of data
Right: CEO Andrew Reynolds, appointed chief executive of RLB’s UK practice in November 2019
that we generate on behalf of our customers. And the challenge for a business like ours is how do we leverage that global dataset and turn it into intelligence for our clients? And how do we make sure that we have the skills that enable that to be done? So, we’ve certainly seen a bit of a shift in skills,” Reynolds says. Similarly RLB is placing an increased emphasis on offsite construction, which ties into its commitments to sustainability and social value. “For us, offsite manufacture is about making ethical, balanced decisions for our clients that can marry the uniqueness of offsite with the client need. And I think we are now starting to see some really good case studies that come with offsite,” says Reynolds. He admits that the UK is something of a latecomer to the offsite party and puts that down to a range of complex factors, including the client briefing process, the design and planning and procurement processes, as well as the maturity of supply chain. “There’s a whole series of things that I think need a slightly different approach when you consider offsite. As we know, the industry suffers from fragmentation and to get the right skillset brought to each project with the relevant skills in this subject is always a challenge,” he says. “But I think we will start to see skills move from the site to the manufacturing process and it will become more plug and play. So we see our skills shifting to offsite procurement and offsite contract management.”
22 | construction manager april 2020
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17/03/2020 14:23
