Name: Paul Davies
Employer: Skanska Private
Project: One Kingdom Street, Paddington Central
Contract: JCT 98
It’s a long way from carpenter to construction manager, and Paul Davies has spent 30 years travelling it. During that time he has perfected a clear vision of how to make a construction team work.
Communication and leadership by example are key. With the confidence born of a lifetime in construction at all levels, Paul prides himself on admitting he doesn’t always have the right answers. Willing to listen to others, he allows his team to speak their mind and is not frightened to change his own ideas accordingly. It’s a management style that wins loyalty, commitment and respect.
He believes so strongly in the open-plan office that he puts his own desk in the middle of it. In the case of this phase II development of Paddington Central, his co-location of the services company with his own staff forged a powerful project team bond with all the benefits that entails.
Paul kept financial planning and risk management on a tight rein. His control of the design, programme and costs, at a time when the construction industry was becoming more and more heated, resulted in Skanska and the client sharing the £1m remaining in the contingency budget at the handover.
Quality as well as programme benefited from prefabricated pipe modules for ceiling voids, vertical risers delivered to site stacked on purpose-built trolleys, a preconstructed boiler house and toilet pods. Paul insisted on the team using a defects database, which gained the confidence of the architect that quality was being properly checked, and resulted in the handover of a virtually defect-free structure.
An astute manager, with a timely and non-confrontation approach, Paul offered a clear and decisive project helm. His stewardship of this project was so exceptional that the client awarded Skanska the contract for the next phase at Paddington Central – nine months before practical completion of this phase – provided Paul and his team took it on.