Chartered builder?

Back then, in 1969, Laing was a veritable management factory. Henderson and other new recruits were lean, mean, learning machines, and for two years they mixed classes at the old Regent Street Polytechnic with site experience, doing a whirlwind tour of the main disciplines, estimating, quantity surveying, site engineering, final accounts, site management.

At the end of it all he sat his CIOB exams and, having been groomed and pumped for management, was told to cool his jets and wait his turn for serious responsibility. He didn't, preferring to work for one of Laing's subcontractors as a site agent for three years before becoming land and surveying director for Lovell Homes and later managing director of its southern branch.

Henderson and Laing were to have another fateful encounter. Fast forward to 1997. As a consultant with Parkman, advising the Department of Trade and Industry, Henderson is evaluating public/private partnership tenders for the £300m National Physical Laboratory project at Teddington in Middlesex. He recommends Laing, which ends up losing £70m on the NPL because of a persistent inability to meet the rigorous specifications for its close control rooms - the temperature had to be exact to within a 10th of a degree centigrade. The difficulties with the NPL contributed to Laing's downfall and ignominious sale for £1.

"I have no regrets at all about recommending Laing," Henderson says now. "They were the right contractor at the time. It was unfortunate that they couldn't meet the specifications."

It's significant that Henderson took over as president of the CIOB last month because the man embodies the changing nature of both the industry and the institute, as his client-oriented role in the Laing saga demonstrates. He had early experience in contracting but in his day job now he advises government on PFI procurement of everything from fire services to street lighting. His appointment raises the question: just what does the CIOB stand for?

"I'm a chartered builder," he says, to emphasise just how catholic the CIOB church is. "For a lot of members that is a problematic designation." If the CIOB's merger with the Architecture and Surveying Institute (ASI) goes ahead, as Henderson hopes it will because he's been driving it, all 5,000 ASI members will become chartered builders too, and that makes the CIOB an even broader church, enfolding mining, archaeological, estate and valuation surveyors within its warm embrace.

A Broader church
Henderson says he is having a running conversation with the Privy Council about what it means to be a chartered builder. It's a safe bet that in the future we'll be hearing less about builders and more about construction business professionals. This will suit Henderson and others like him who need more elbow room within the chartered builder designation.

For instance, he feels that design and build is a proper extension of the contracting function – as long as clients can be led toward defining their needs appropriately. And the next natural step is DBFO (design, build, fund and operate). Contractors, he believes, are the natural anchor partners in such schemes and he encourages even mid-sized contractors to nestle into new roles as subcontractors in these big food chains.

"It's where some of the work is for those who want it, but my advice if you're not serious about playing is don't start because it's a very expensive joining fee," he says, referring to the high bid costs.

If you’re not serious about becoming a PFI player, don’t start. it’s a very expensive joining fee

Henderson feels at home in the world of public/private partnerships. In the early 90s under the Major government he was a member of the Treasury's Private Finance Panel Executive, a 26-member body whose job was to kickstart the private finance initiative. With Parkman, he is currently directing several "joined-up government" construction projects for metropolitan authorities.

Clearly, the term "chartered builder" covers only a fraction of what, from Henderson's perspective, new-style contracting companies do (design, build, finance, facilities management, property management). And yet he believes the CIOB has a broad enough remit to remain at the heart of this complicated beast – with some tweaks. He envisages faculties within the CIOB, smaller centres of excellence that reflect the specialisms.

Learning curve
For years Henderson has been working behind the scenes on the CIOB's education policies. For the last seven he has chaired the education and membership board. The consistent theme of his efforts has been to change the career ladder, with its single entry point and implied uniformity of direction (up), into a career climbing frame, with multiple entry points and the possibility for movement in all directions.

"This better reflects the way the industry actually works," he says. "People leave site and go into consulting, or get seconded to government, then they may go back on site or do something else. A bit like me."

In support of this, Henderson backed NVQs and worked to give NVQ Level 4 the status of a degree. He is also investigating ways of making it easier for non-cognate graduates to obtain CIOB membership.

Catchphrase
Henderson may be the only CIOB president ever to have thought up a snazzy catchphrase for his term: Look up, look out and look good.

He admits it's corny. It also needs explaining. "Look up" means an end to the CIOB's historical, navel-gazing regard for internal procedures, and engaging with other professional bodies and government in order to influence the industry. "Look out" means speaking out on issues affecting the wider industry. "Look good" means raising and improving the image of construction. Henderson says these priorities emerged under Bob Heathfield and previous presidents and that work is already under way.

In his one short year, Henderson is most likely to have the greatest impact on government influence. He thinks it's important because government is both client and regulator. He denies being any sort of Whitehall operator, but admits that he does understand how government works. He has already met with the DTI and has been trying to get a meeting with the Department for Education and Skills.

"We've been conspicuously absent from those corridors over the last three years," he says. "It's just a matter of sitting down, talking to them and letting them know that we're here."