Name: Benjamin Stevenson
Employer: Kier Build
Project: The Orchard, St Bernards Hospital, Southall
Contract: NEC design & build
The complex and inescapable trade-offs in the design and construction process make it all but impossible for a construction manager to please every project stakeholder and participant. But Ben Stevenson has achieved a near-miracle on the Orchard, with the client, designers, consultants and suppliers as well as the construction team all uniting to sing his praises.
His upfront, honest, helpful and open management style was the perfect stance for a contract predicated on mutual trust and co-operation. Offices were open plan, with cross-discipline seating, workstations for subcontractors, and space for the client’s representatives all helping to integrate the team.
Ben encouraged sleeves-up problem solving through daily briefings and workface discussions with subcontractors, designers, client team and clinical staff. He embodied and propagated the spirit of the NEC contract by insisting that the discussion and resolution of issues took priority over recording and administering.
He used the early warning system to give the client advice on costs and programme implications that helped it make informed decisions on enhancements. He provided accurate price forecasts that gave the client cost certainty and predictability throughout the project, culminating in Kier and the NHS trust sharing a £700,000 budget gain.
Ben, who started his construction career as a surveyor, drove that shared gain through specification mastery. He instigated a change from a concrete frame and blockwork walls to steel frame and lightweight walling. With test results showing that the proposed aluminium windows were not secure enough, he upspecified the frames to steel, relieving the resulting budgetary pressures by introducing a cheaper but still robust roofing solution.
Right from the start, the client had engaged independent consultants to monitor the construction programme. This was, after all, the biggest Procure 21 project the trust had ever undertaken, and the first facility of its type in the UK. Month after month they validated Ben’s management and progress, and concluded at handover that in detail, quality and accuracy, the project was the best they had ever audited.
In delivering it, Ben has also built an admirable platform for even closer relationships with the client and further Procure 21 framework business.