2019
Joseph McNeil MCIOB
Company: Sir Robert McAlpine
Project: 120 Oxford Street, London
Sir Robert McAlpine was offered this job following the failure two weeks after site start of the more competitively priced contractor that had won the tender. Joseph McNeil, though, took on his first role as project manager without any prior knowledge of the scheme amassed during SRM’s previous bid for it (the tender team had subsequently moved on to other opportunities).
2018
Neil Lock MCIOB
Company: Wates Construction
Project: V&A Museum
Neil Lock’s project to construct a colossal columnless basement gallery in a quality-worshipping museum proved as intense and testing as it was thrilling and inspiring.
2017
Margaret Conway MCIOB
Company: McAleer & Rushe
Project: 9 Adelaide, Belfast
Eighteen months to demolish a 10-storey block and construct a 100,000sqft turnkey office on a city centre site with no-storage restrictions and painfully difficult access (major demolition work, for example, could take place on Sunday only) is quite a challenge. Add to that late design changes, a three-month holdup in getting the contract signed, and a budget that was even tighter than the site, and you get some idea of the scale of Margaret Conway’s achievement in delivering two months early to an excellent standard throughout.
2016
Paul Marlow MCIOB
Company: McAleer & Rushe
Project: UNITE Angel Lane, Stratford
Late land purchase delayed Paul Marlow’s already tightly timetabled scheme for a 14-storey complex of 759 student flats by a seemingly disastrous two months. Rather than glumly inform the client – who needed the original completion date to fall in with the start of the academic year – and put in for an extension of time, Paul looked for solutions.
2015
Dennis Wilson MCIOB
Company: Lend Lease
Project: National Theatre – NT Future
Dennis Wilson ably contained the drama put on by this massive refurbishment of a grade II*-listed theatre. He ushered the difficulties and challenges that abounded on the scheme towards the exit door and then safely out of it.