Remembering Geoffrey Trickey (1 Sept 1935 to 23 May 2025)

Geoff Trickey’s influence in my life began long before I actually met him. Emerging from university with a degree in quantity surveying, and not being sure about what to do next, I was encouraged by my father to apply for a job at Davis Belfield & Everest (as it then was). As a contractor, my father had come across many quantity surveying practices, but DB&E struck him as unusually enlightened, and that came from dealing with Geoff on a complicated project on Martlesham Heath.

That job interview (with the founding partner of the business, Owen Davis) was probably the most important day of my working life: I got the job, and didn’t move again until retiring 36 years later.

Any temptation to move was quelled by being offered a partnership at a ridiculously young age, and that was like going back to university – learning, particularly from Nick Davis, Owen’s son, and from Geoff.

They came to the profession through very different routes: Nick as a graduate of the University of Cambridge; and Geoff, the son of a builder (the source of respect for those who actually do the work), from National Service (the source of many stories) and from a spell at the National Building Agency (established by the government more than 60 years ago, we may note with a hollow laugh, “to further the industrialisation of building, to fulfil the country’s needs for new buildings” – but the source of different ways of looking at the industry).

Together Nick and Geoff demonstrated not just what the job could be, but also how it should be done and the principles and values that should be applied in doing it.

He had high principles, a clear vision of how a just world should work, clarity of thought and decisiveness

The university analogy is particularly appropriate for Geoff as he had something of the “mad professor” about him, always thinking and always in a hurry – often because, for somebody so numerate, he had an odd approach to time-keeping, believing that he was not actually late until the time he should have arrived had passed, even if he was still 30 minutes away.

Beyond the confines of the business, though, Geoff is probably best known for sharing his wit and wisdom through public speaking. Although the frustrations of that life would have driven him to distraction, he would have made a good politician.

He had high principles, a clear vision of how a just world should work, clarity of thought and decisiveness. So maybe, on second thoughts, he would not have made a natural politician – but he certainly would have known how to deal with hecklers.

Speaking at a conference one time, he listened patiently as somebody – at tedious length – corrected something that he had said. “You may be right,” said Geoff, “but I was funnier.”

And of course, he was always funnier, and to a young partner working in a confrontational industry, it was instructive to see how unpopular messages (generally along the lines of clients who are going to need more money, and/or contractors who are not going to get as much of it as they hoped) can be softened with well-judged humour that nonetheless manages to convey both firmness and sympathy.

It was in that spirit that Geoff literally wrote the book on contractors’ claims (The Presentation and Settlement of Contractors’ Claims), which displayed all the qualities of enlightenment that my father, as one of many, had seen in him. Mark Hackett, also a partner in the business and co-writer of the second edition, points to passages in that book which say as much about the man as they do about the subject, with telling references to “the Solomon syndrome” or the “veneer of precision” – but above all to the need for honesty and fairness.

A loyal friend who regarded building relationships as every bit as important as building buildings

The real evidence, though, lies in the relationships formed and the respect earned in the series of major projects which provide the milestones in the career of all who work in construction. In Geoff’s case this included shopping centres in Harrow and Bromley, the restoration and refurbishment of Mansion House, an almost career-long programme of work for John Lewis and, probably most challenging of all, the Barbican Arts Centre.

This was a project on which there were literally thousands of variation orders and where I can honestly say that I can think of nobody else who could have designed and negotiated a settlement that was fair to both parties. Martin Davis, who led for the engineering services contractor on that project, says of those negotiations that “they were the most intellectually challenging discussions and throughout, despite all the pressures, he was the most honourable of beings”.

There is much more: a pillar of successive parish churches; a family man, utterly devoted to his wife Coral, whose loss in 2014 struck him hard, and fiercely proud of their children Paul, Philip, David and Joanna and of the generations that follow; a loyal friend who regarded building relationships as every bit as important as building buildings; and more besides.

As an epitaph for a working life, though, I can do no better than those words: an intellectually challenging and honourable man who will be much missed by us all.

>> Also read: Paul Morrell’s tribute to Nick Davis