Name: Keith Williams MCIOB
Employer: Morgan Sindall
Project: Kentish Town Health Centre
Contract: LIFT
With so many would-be cooks, all with their own must-have ingredients and mutually incompatible recipes, this project could easily have ended up a toxic dog’s dinner. That the final building emerged to a rapturous reception and with all the stakeholders and project team still friends at the end of it is all but a miracle, indisputably ascribable to Keith Williams.
Strong personalities abounded on all sides: engineering, construction, the user community and the neighbours. Gently gelling all parties together, Keith slowly but always ultimately coaxed agreement and compromise out of the obdurate and the enthusiastic without anyone feeling they had lost credibility. His open manner and his determination to put words into action straightaway won a great deal of trust.
Clear, patient and expert in his communications with team members, he gained their total commitment to solving the challenges of a unique and complex design. Based on the Jenga game, the award-winning design, generated by an architectural competition, needed a great deal of input to ensure the top-heavy irregularly shaped structure wouldn’t overbalance.
Keith took on the design management role himself to make sure that expectations would be exceeded. Even though the contract prohibited design changes, he went out of his way to accommodate 30 such alterations at the request of the client and users. And when the realisation struck that the chosen combination of glazing and natural ventilation would overheat the building, he came up with the solution, fixing architectural grilles over the windows so they could be left open.
It took all Keith’s rhetorical and diplomatic skills to push this project through successfully. He slowly won over the neighbours, fiercely opposed to the project as a traffic-disrupting blight in their backyard, through a campaign of consideration. He distributed resident etiquette packs and instructed staff to wash the neighbours’ cars and clean their windows.
He then stole the show at a difficult planning meeting six months from completion for the substation that would power the project. His honesty and determination in presenting the building case brought success, preventing serious delay.
In getting this exceedingly ambitious scheme built on time, on budget and to a stunning level of quality, Keith has delivered the perfect project.
Value: £9.3m