Name: Paul Dodsworth
Employer: Bowmer & Kirkland
Project: Maxim Park, Eurocentral, Lanarkshire
Contract: SBCC 1999
For Bowmer & Kirkland, this speculative office development represents the biggest project it has ever taken on. Its successful completion owes everything to Paul Dodsworth. He gave the client the quality it wanted in the time frame it wanted and did so without in the process turning the guaranteed maximum price into a millstone around the contractor’s neck.
Paul clearly understood the roles and responsibilities required of each member of the construction team. He tailored his management style to accommodate the many stakeholders involved, shrewdly deciding who to encourage and who to coerce, when to challenge and when to support.
Exceptionally well organised, Paul never let up. His rigour exemplified the focus and discipline needed to create the construction team culture needed to build a complex, high-quality development. He spent three months in carefully selecting the major trade subcontractors, ensuring none was overloaded and all could deliver the quality – a top-line item for the client.
And when the right result meant going beyond the contract to put in the extra mile, that’s what he did. Take the original concept for facetted precast concrete steps for the public space in front of one of the blocks. After reviewing the design, Paul agreed that they needed to be set to a curve, and made it happen at no extra cost to the client.
Paul puts his practical approach to buildability down to being a bricklayer by trade plus 27 years in the industry. But that’s only part of it. His understanding of methodology and sequencing, his clarity of communication, and his considered yet challenging approach, plus a dry sense of humour that invigorates the team, marks out a gifted construction manager.
Value: £122m