Name: Duncan Purvis
Employer: Willmott Dixon Construction Ltd
Project: Ozone Building, Orpington College of Further Education
Contract: JCT 2005
Duncan Purvis is a construction manager who has achieved the seemingly impossible. Budget: nailed. Quality: all 17 phases handed over defect-free and with very low snagging levels. And programme? Well, Duncan delivered this scheme a staggering three months early.
Indeed, his achievement was even greater than this. He superbly managed the terrifying logistics of a very tight town centre site. There was barely enough site space for one average-size lorry and no storage whatsoever, while the access road could only just cope with the 15m-long concrete slabs and steel columns required.
You’d think the client would be happy; ecstatic would be a better description. Because Duncan delivered all of this in a hugely user-sensitive manner. The college remained operational throughout the project, so he had to marshall the deliveries and the 250 construction workers at the site peak without impacting the 1,300 students doing all their lessons in the tower block whose refurb was part of the contract. The client even reported that the three sets of exams that took place during the project were held with less disruption and fewer problems than previous years, and that its exam success rate shot up.
Duncan’s secret? Total collaboration. He put the contract in a drawer and left it there. He held an early partnering workshop, drew up a project charter, and then stuck to its no-blame principles. Just one example of how it worked: all stakeholders would agree the solution to issues, delays and queries, sign them off and bring the works back on course before any party looked at responsibilities and decided who would pay.
Value: £16.7m