Name: Gordon Dodd
Employer: Leadbitter Group
Project: Alexandra Place, Woodley
As with too many cooks in a kitchen, too many stakeholders in a project is a recipe for delay, discord and disruption. But by slipping an iron hand of clear project direction and financial security in a velvet glove of collaborative relationship building, Gordon Dodd turned a complex partnership into a winning team.
He faced the daunting prospect of a council commissioning its first purpose-built extra-care scheme, with a housing association, housing provider and care provider in the mix as well as the architect. His solution was a can-do customer-focused magic that suffused the project. Effectively managing the whole development from preconstruction right through to aftercare, Gordon hammered away at the shared vision theme.
His prelaunch workshop, stream of partnering workshops and final finishing-strong workshop, combined with his own good-humoured and vigorous solution-finding approach, bred collaboration. He carefully selected his team, appointing a senior surveyor who’d worked with the client, a site manager who’d worked on an award-winning extra-care scheme, and an internal finishes foreman who had experience of extra-care residential construction.
The financials were protected and stakeholder confidence driven by his impeccable value engineering. Examples include involving the interior designer early to get approval on finish and quality and the space to improve the budget, reducing the amount of support steelwork in the roof trusses. He fabricated the balconies offsite, and used slimmer precast units for the corridors, which also increased space for the services. The end-result of Gordon’s high-quality management was a high-quality building.
Value: £7.4m