Name: Michael Lane MCIOB
Employer: Willmott Dixon Construction Ltd
Project: Abraham Guest High School, Orrell, Wigan
Contract: PPC 2000
Mike Lane’s leadership of this project gave an object lesson in how a partnering contract should work in practice. Not only did he deliver a high-quality scheme on time, he also added value through a lot of strategic thinking.
With a large parcel of land still to be acquired for the building, Mike got construction moving by shifting the building footprint by 2m so that all the piling works could be completed in one visit. He also built a temporary 70m-long sheet-piled retaining wall to push on with the works while procurement of the land was still ongoing.
He made a massive contribution to the £4.5m value-engineering exercise required to make the scheme financially viable. He adjusted some of the more highly engineered design elements, and cut the number of retaining walls.
But his most valuable initiative came through dealing imaginatively with the substantial amount of spoil set aside during the cut and fill of the site, which had a 4m drop. Instead of trucking 45,000 cubic metres of spoil offsite, Mike adjusted the grading of the levels and distributed the material across farmland acquired for the school playing fields. The saving was £1.5m, not to mention the environmental benefit of 3,500 fewer lorryloads, and his robust management of the temporary spoil stockpiles eliminated the site access and health and safety issues.
He then reinvested the shared savings into the scheme, incorporating £600K worth of enhancements. The client appreciated the open-book, collaborative regime and gained quality improvements such as anti-bandit glass.
Value: £19.5m