McLaren turns focus on building safety skills

When McLaren decided to create the role of building safety and refurbishment managing director within the company, the tier 1 contractor was responding to a critical market need.

Up to 60% of the 9,000 to 12,000 buildings over 11 metres in height with dangerous cladding haven’t been identified yet. Of those in the government’s portfolio, remediation hasn’t started on half and has been completed in only around a third, according to a report by the National Audit Office.

“We pride ourselves in looking at opportunities to position ourselves ahead of the rest of the pack,” says Paul Woodhams, who in November was promoted to the newly created post at McLaren.

“We are not quite sure what this emerging workload will look like because it’s all new to the industry and we are part of the cog [in the machine] that the Building Safety Act is impacting on. But being there at the beginning is always the best place to be.”

Woodhams joined McLaren in 2021, where in his previous role as operations director he was responsible for complex remediation programmes in residential and mixed-use estates.

One of Woodhams’ priorities as building safety and refurbishment managing director is ensuring that McLaren’s workforce and supply chain are prepared for the new building safety regulatory framework. When it comes to skills, Woodhams says that he is looking for “very good builders”.

“Essentially, we have a team of builders that are capable and have evidence of being competent in what they are delivering,” he tells CM.

“I’ve worked in refurbishment myself for the last 34 years or so, so I understand what refurbishment looks like and the type of people we need. I’m looking for people that have got that eye for detail, so we can ensure that we’re doing it right the first time.”

Demonstrating competency is another essential requirement for McLaren. For this, Woodhams and his colleagues have spent “a lot of time” creating ‘competence profiles’ and integrating them into the recruitment process to ensure that the right people get hired for the right jobs.

Each represents an individual role, such as site manager or a project director, with different levels of competency. “What we then do is assess our teams against those profiles,” he explains. “We assess the individual but what we then have is the capability to create a team profile.”

That allows him and his colleagues to carry out a “gap analysis” able to point at the additional skills or competencies necessary for a project. This process is also linked to the staff appraisals to enable career development within the company.

“We want people to stay at McLaren. As people are growing and developing in the business, their competence profile needs to grow and develop with their role,” Woodhams says. “If we want to promote somebody into a new role, we make sure that the competencies are there to go with them as well.”

To ensure competency within the supply chain, Woodhams and his colleagues use a detailed “prequalification profile” they run through with them.

He continues: “It’s not just about company covenant and what jobs they’ve done in the past – it’s about who’s going to be on the job and again drilling back down into the competencies and the profiles of the people to make sure they’ve got the right skills and attributes to deliver what’s required by their discipline or by their function.”

One of Woodhams’s most complex projects during his tenure as operations director is the Chalcots Estate in Camden, north‑west London, where McLaren is replacing the dangerous Grenfell-style cladding on four of the five 1960s high-rises.

The £77.2m job, expected to finish this spring, includes recladding a total facade area of around 24,000 square metres, full window replacement, renewal of flat roofs, installation of building maintenance units, replacement of brickwork to the ground and first floor levels and insulation to the undercroft when required.

The work is taking place during occupation. With 3,500 residents across 652 properties in the 23-storey towers, Woodhams says one of the most difficult aspects of the projects is resident engagement.

“Working in a live environment is challenging as you would expect, with thousands of residents each wanting different things,” he says. “But it’s going really well: the customer feedback that we are gathering from residents, on cleanliness, politeness and quality of the work, are all up in the high 90s.”

Residents can engage with McLaren through different communication channels, including a dedicated online portal, paper questionnaires, by email or verbally.

“[Each of the residents] is an individual customer and we need to listen to their feedback, respond to it and make adjustments where necessary,” Woodhams continues.

Looking ahead, Woodhams sees an “evolving pipeline” of projects that will continue taking form as the dust from the new building safety legislation settles in.

Woodhams concludes: “We’re only part of the overall process. There are landlords, designers, planners, local authorities, builders, consultants… and everyone forms part of this new whole process that we’re embarking on.

“I think different people are getting their heads around it in different timescales so potentially the cork is going to burst out the bottle anytime soon. We just want to be at the front of it so we can help as many customers as we possibly can.”