Name: Rod Kilby
Employer: Telford Homes
Project: ICONA, Stratford, London E15
Contract: JCT 1980 for the 87 social housing flats
Mild-mannered and modest he may be, but Rod Kilby lets nothing stand in the way of a safe and successful project.
Right from the start he had to fight hard to keep this scheme alive at all. The site lies right next to the Olympic Park (and had received planning approval before the 2012 Olympics was awarded to London) and was served with a compulsory purchase order to develop the overall infrastructure feeding the Park. Rod led the redesign of the site frontage for future roadworks that allowed the scheme to proceed.
Even before this potentially fatal blow was averted, Rod had found a way past the challenge thrown up by the close proximity of railway lines to the tower block. His omission of a basement from the tower successfully overcame the problem.
Rod’s planning was of the highest order. When the archaeologists’ two-day slip-trench exercise turned into a 12-week dig in the middle of the site, he resequenced the sheet piling and foundation works to the two smaller blocks so that work on the tower could continue, minimising the disruption to the programme.
His negotiation and sequencing of the highway works avoided a complicated Section 278 agreement. And he successfully led the redesign of the piling works to facilitate the boring under the site of a large cable tunnel for the Olympics.
Rod also championed key innovations. He pushed hard for the adoption of unitised curtain walling for the tower in the interests of programme and safety, even though it was a more expensive solution than other cladding types. And he embraced bathroom pods and prefabricated steel staircases and balconies for the project.
An excellent man manager, Rod involved the whole site team in decision-making, and successfully nurtured a mix of trainees and old hands. He kept the tidiest of sites, which contributed to the widespread pleasure taken in the project by all who worked on it.
And to put the icing on the cake, Rod delivered a high-quality project a whopping three months ahead of programme to the delight of both private and social housing tenants, and the benefit of Telford Homes’ cashflow and costs.