Name: John Brennan
Employer: Skanska
Project: All Saints Academy, Cheltenham
Too many cooks spoil the broth but on this co-faith school, John Brennan brought off a new-build banquet. Given the client group included two dioceses of different denominations, a county council, a borough council and two predecessor schools, all equipped with a stirring spoon and eager to use it, it was some achievement.
Faced with a stream of constant, sometimes conflicting, demands, it would have been understandable if John had had the occasional Gordon Ramsay moment. Yet he never had anything but a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye – to the delight of his clients
Professional, genuinely interested in the project and utterly committed, he won the bid and brought exceptional leadership to a logistically complex project with an extremely tight timeframe. Just before site start he was even acting as the groundworks foreman, directing plant to ensure an archaeological dig would not impede the build.
He rethought the planned underground biomass fuel delivery and storage system to reduce costs and improve buildability. He found craftworkers with the skills to deliver what seemed an unbuildable copper-clad chapel without blowing the budget. And he cannily reused the material excavated for the archaeological dig as a piling mat and the sub-base for the new sports pitches.
Despite a topographical survey that was 300mm out of true and a flooring contractor that went bust, he still satisfied every client criterion. He handed the building over three days early and the pitches a fortnight early, within the budget and to a top-notch quality.
Value: £23.2m