Name: Chris Travers ICIOB
Employer: Mace Group
Project: Riverside Buildings A, B & C, Granta Park, Cambridge
Contract: Construction management
A consummate professional, Chris Travers quickly took charge of this project, displaying a commanding leadership with outstanding results.
Joining the project at the early design stage, he instigated a series of well-orchestrated design meetings, rapidly establishing a design programme that all stakeholders bought into. His practical knowledge and experience helped solve the stickier points holding up project delivery.
He identified the key issues to tackle in achieving a cost plan that would let the project go forward. And he ensured design information was released early enough to procure trades packages as efficiently as possible.
The client quickly recognised his ability and Chris took over the management of day-to-day project issues. He started off building what were ultimately excellent relations of mutual respect with the consultant and subcontractor teams by assessing the scope of their appointments and considering their ideas and opinions.
His communications were impeccable. He implemented fortnightly workshops to encourage the whole delivery team to participate in working together, generating solutions and taking ownership of their respective areas of the project. He insisted on the trade contractors presenting their own overall programmes for review at the regular progress meetings to ensure they considered their scope of work and how to achieve their targets rather than leaving it all to Mace.
His splendid organisation, independent thinking and powerful articulacy combined to give the project its biggest win. The Environment Agency had ordered that displacement piling be used on the most contaminated area of the site rather than the CFA technique planned for the other two blocks. This put heavy cost pressure on the piling package as well as the programme. It was Chris’s robust challenge that won approval for the CFA-only approach.
The quality of his proactive, collaborative and credible management style was recognised by the client, which awarded him another two contracts at the business park on the strength of his performance.
Value: £8.8m