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This tall buildings project was complex owing to the building height and the structural design to pair both concrete and steel. Considering the ‘heat’ in the London buildings market, this was a particularly important programme for our client, and an opportunity to put themselves on the UK tall-buildings map.

We were asked to fill a number of key leadership positions on this project, including the Programme Director, Construction Director, Commercial Director and Design Director. It was imperative that each position would be filled by individuals who had already helped deliver a complex tall-building programme such as this, and who could also prove a capability to work with challenging internationally located clients.

At the outset of the project there were no comparable builds in the UK, and only two recent examples of towers built at a comparable height. Therefore, our search targeted individuals across Europe, the Middle East, the Far-East, Australia and North America, alongside the UK market. Our strategy was to engage our network at the very beginning of the search to gather a broad spectrum of candidate referral and market opinion, and this included speaking with a number of retired former tall-buildings Project Directors. From these discussions we were able to access and engage individuals that would otherwise have been unobtainable, and this approach also helped us to identify emerging talent.

During the process we flew a number of international candidates into the UK, and were able to secure the full programme team for our client from a diverse shortlist. This included a winner of the Women in Construction’s Engineer of Year award and two individuals as a pair in the Programme Director and Construction Director roles, who would only agree to join as a team.