Name: Jonathan Foster
Employer: Mace Ltd
Project: Ropemaker Place, London
Contract: Construction management
Many construction managers move heaven and earth to deliver their projects on time and on budget. But Jonathan Foster managed the rare feat indeed of delivering the original targets set at tender three years earlier.
Jonathan turned in a phenomenal performance from bid to close-out. He led an integrated construction team that incorporated cost and project management. He built a highly motivated, high-performing team almost from scratch in a busy market. And despite the churn rate of 20% typical in the industry at the time, he kept virtually his entire 45-strong team for all three years of the scheme.
He co-located team members from different disciplines in an open-plan environment. And weekly meetings of the entire integrated team gave everyone the opportunity to raise issues and contribute to close-out. He regularly walked the job, keeping in touch with what was going on at the workface.
His establishment of a target programme four weeks inside the contract programme was key in allowing him to incorporate nearly 2,000 change requests by the required date. In the last 10 months of the project he acted decisively to ensure that the extremely fast nature of the programme did not pile up risk to quality. He recruited a quality project manager, and moved from a package-based management structure to area-based.
With four months left he had each team member present on its designated area and completion strategy. Two months later he started running package completion meetings to clearly identify critical items to the client, design team and tenant teams. Within six weeks of practical completion all 30 trade contract final accounts had been agreed.
Value: £150.3m