CMYA winner Lee Hutchinson and the science of success

Photograph: Ed Tyler

An ambitious vision and unexpected complications at St Paul’s School Science Building were no match for the skills and expertise of CMYA winner Lee Hutchinson, of Mace. Elaine Knutt reports.

What’s up there on the list of things you wouldn’t want to find on your site, awards host Julia Bradbury asked Mace’s operations director Lee Hutchinson MCIOB at the glittering Construction Manager of the Year Awards ceremony last month. Hutchinson, awarded gold medal for his achievements delivering an “exemplary” science block for a London public school, had a pretty impressive answer – a 500mm-thick underground concrete slab where your building’s foundations are supposed to be.

Part of the site at St Paul’s School in Barnes, southwest London lay above filter beds from a former Thames Water reservoir, a structure that was supposed to have been demolished in the 1950s and hadn’t shown up in any site search or survey. Finding the 500mm slab very much in situ – necessitating a change in the piling methodology to drill through the concrete to the ground underneath, plus dealing with the resultant programme changes – was just one of the challenges Hutchinson faced on a £17m fixed-price design and build project.

Another unwelcome discovery was the fact that two key subcontractors – in cladding and roofing – went into liquidation midway during the build. But it was also an example of how 40-year-old Hutchinson managed to leverage all his skills and experience to deliver an exemplary project.

“At the time it’s difficult to deal with,” he said. “But you don’t panic, you take stock, you analyse the situation – and then you recover.”

The science block at St Paul’s was designed by Nicholas Hare Architects to give the school a cloistered quadrangle that evoked the calm of an Oxbridge college. As Hutchinson told CM, the client also had an aspiration that the new building should serve the school community for 500 years, or “perpetuity”. Tasked with delivering this ambitious vision on a fixed budget, Hutchinson combined finding £1m in value engineering savings with close collaboration with design team to ensure their design intent wasn’t compromised.

St Paul’s School Science Building, Barnes, south west London

The results have certainly impressed the design community: the project was shortlisted for a New London Architecture award and an RIBA London Award; it was highly commended in the Design Through Innovation category at the 2014 RICS London Awards; the scheme won a prestigious Civic Trust Award in 2014; and it was on the shortlist for project of the year at the 2014 Education Estates Awards.

A key construction innovation introduced by Hutchinson was to use precast arched units forming the ceiling soffit of the quadrangle walkway as permanent formwork for the first floor slab. It meant that the upper surface of the soffits, each cast as a single unit, was infilled to create a flat surface for the first floor slab to be poured on. Pouring the slab on top of the precast vaults effectively glued them to the main in-situ frame and first floor slab. Once this had been done, the supporting falsework below could be removed. “The alternative would have been to use much smaller sections for the arches – with all the joints and fixings visible,” he said.

The teaching labs are heavily serviced, requiring gas for Bunsen burners as well as data cabling for interactive whiteboards.
But with so much plain exposed concrete around, the question of where the services are hidden naturally arose. The solution was precast the exposed concrete panels throughout the building with services routes pre-installed, including conduits for small power, data and fire alarms.

Other work carried out under Mace’s design and build contract included a 3,000 m3 rainwater drainage system, a new substation, six new championship-standard tennis courts and landscaping. The project was completed with minimal defects with an Accident Incident Rate (AIR) of zero.

Hutchinson inspired his team to pay meticulous attention to detail at every stage of the build programme: for instance, piles were driven to single digit millimetre precision. In fact, speaking to CM after the awards ceremony, Hutchinson felt that leading and bonding a diverse team was the real challenge of the project.

“You have to build a team spirit, take people who have never worked together before and build them into a team, and communicate within the team so that everyone is pulling together.”

He also ensured that pupils and staff remained engaged as the project progressed. All were invited to comment on mock ups and sample materials and regular site visits were arranged. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that working alongside 2,000 curious boys from 7 to 18 had its challenges.

“I think every single one of them wanted to be up that crane! But we couldn’t arrange a closer look – our insurance wouldn’t have coped!”

St Paul’s was Hutchinson’s first project for Mace, which he joined in January 2011 after an 18-year career at John Sisk & Son, where he also earned a CMYA final place in 2008. It certainly put him in the limelight in his new company: apparently, the entire board of Mace dropped in for a presentation on the project from Hutchinson. “I had a few kittens the night before,” he admits. But they seem to have left impressed: he was promoted from senior manager to associate director on completion of the project, and has since secured a further promotion to operations director.

He is currently applying his skills to an even more high profile and sensitive project: the £60m refurbishment of the New Bodleian Library extension in Oxford, a grade II-listed building designed by Giles Gilbert Scott dating from 1946. He has eye on a very important date in March, when the newly rechristened Weston Library is due to be opened by the Queen.

Describing himself as a “lad from a northern comprehensive”, Hutchinson studied for a BEng in civil engineering with construction management at the University of Leeds, later joining Sisk as a graduate site engineer. But he traces his interest in construction much further back – to the 8-year-old child who pestered his neighbour, at the time working on the Channel Tunnel, to allow him to visit the site. “I knew I had a brain but I wanted to work on site, and to do something that had a sense of purpose and a sense of achievement.”

But that sense of career satisfaction comes at the expense of long and tiring hours, and Hutchinson pays tribute to the forbearance of his wife, Kim. “Without her, there is no way I could do the role. She’s had to put up with the long hours and the bad moods I sometimes bring home. Without her and my five-year-old daughter, I couldn’t do what I do.”

As for the future, Hutchinson is clearly in his element on site, and his immediate plans are to continue experiencing that high of coordinating a team to a successful project conclusion. But he agrees that there is “life beyond site”, and his progression through Mace suggests he could be right.

And he certainly seems to know how to inspire trust, as CIOB chief executive Chris Blythe points out: “Hutchinson is a born leader who instinctively knows how to create an atmosphere of openness and trust within teams and the wider community. His dedication, infectious enthusiasm and unswerving focus in the face of adversity mark him out as one of the best construction managers of his generation. He is a great ambassador for our industry and a very worthy winner.”

Willmott Dixon and Mace: stars of the night

On 30 October, the industry once again came together to celebrate the successes of its high-achieving project managers, gathering at the Grosvenor House Hotel for the premier awards for individuals rather than projects or teams.

All the finalists went through a rigorous judging process, impressing judges who visited the sites to meet the candidates and often their clients too.

And the process has given non-MCIOB finalists a direct route to chartership. Candidates who reach the final are judged to have met the criteria of their Professional Review – an aspect of the competition that has proved a popular incentive since it was introduced in 2012.

The employers represented at the event were, of course, dominated by the industry’s household names. Willmott Dixon and Mace both had the honour of employing two gold medallists after Willmott Dixon also had the distinction of sending 12 finalists to the event, while Mace sent seven. Meanwhile, Bouygues had six finalists, BAM, ISG and Wates all had five, and Kier celebrated four.

But then there were also the “local heroes” such as Hampshire-based Brymor, R&W Williams and Knox & Williams, both of Cardiff, Simpsons of York, fit-out contractor Collins of south London, and Shaylor Group of the West Midlands. Ten per cent of entries had come from Scotland, and six contractors had entered for the first time.

Chris Richards, chair of the CMYA judging panel, commented: “The exceptional high standard [of previous years] was maintained; the judges recognised that all the projects were commenced and completed within this recession, which brought out additional management qualities that they had to demonstrate in order to overcome associated problems.”