Goodbye, Mr Chips

It's happened at last – The revolution in British eating habits seems to have finally reached the building site. Although we are still some way from seeing Gordon Ramsay knocking up calves' liver in a red wine jus on a housing maintenance job in Peckham, it seems the decline of the great British fry-up is detectable even in such strongholds as the site canteen. The cliché of the sausage-bacon- beans-egg-and-chips-fuelled site worker still exists, but there is now a will in the industry to provide the option something a little more imaginative.

Graham Rice, managing director of Heery International, says the availability of good food should be seen as an integral part of a site's health and safety policy. "We are trying to get a safety-first culture on our sites. But if you don't look after yourself, you can't look after other people. It sounds flippant, but we see it as very important."

Heery has started to promote healthy eating by offering site staff two pieces of fruit a day, as well as installing blood monitoring machines to test workers' blood pressure. "It's had a remarkable effect," reckons Rice. "The fruit replaces chocolate biscuits as a snack on site. Now all the fruit goes within half an hour of being put out."

Good food is integral to a positive working environment, according to project and construction management consultant the RG Group. So much so that the firm has produced a written guide for caterers working on their sites that outlines the type and variety of food it expects.

The guide was written is response to a particularly poor offering from a catering firm on one of RG's schemes in Birmingham. "The food was so rough," says project manager John Hodges, "we decided we needed some control over the menu. The guide we came up with even specifies the size and type of sausage." Hodges stresses the importance of good grub. "You have to have a reasonable quality of food. We have guys working all hours of the day on some of our sites. Morale is very closely linked to food."

It seems that the rise of television chefs such as Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and Antony Worall Thompson in the past five years is beginning to impact on the tastes of builders. "It's all those cookery programmes that are feeding it," confirms RG's Hodges. "The workers are much more aware of nutrition and different foods." Builders are now even demanding (dare we say it?) salads on site.

Janine Berns, a site nurse for construction logistics firm Wilson James, has been gradually delivering a healthy eating message to workers. "I am not making them healthfood freaks, but trying to educate them a bit more about healthy food," she says. "There is nothing wrong with a cooked breakfast, just not every morning. You should balance it with fresh fruit or cereal." Berns sees the key as convincing the workers that healthy food is not necessarily bland.

Graham Smetham, managing director of medium-sized contractor Trak, points out that the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of the workforce is contributing to the change in eating habits. "We have a job in central London. The workforce is a cross section of different ethnic backgrounds – they bring in all sorts of fantastic stuff for their lunch." And the healthy eating drive has even spread through to the Trak office. "We are starting to look at healthier options for lunch, such as salads from Sainsbury's," Smetham adds, before admitting the staff tend to fall off the wagon on Fridays, when they all tuck into sausage sandwiches.

I am pleasantly surprised by the number of people who are not ordering chips. If you offer them the choice, they seem to take it

Construction's culinary revolution is probably at its most impressive at a Stanhope–Bovis Lend Lease site in Regent Street, central London. The project is the first £53m phase of Crown Estate's overhaul of its property on the west side of the capital's premiere shopping area – and the site has a canteen worthy of its upmarket location and prestigious connections. In fact, it is not even called a canteen – it is now a "staff restaurant", the Regent Cafe. And the initiative has been well received. Stanhope director and strategic forum chairman Peter Rogers – whose sister-in-law Ruth jointly runs the River Cafe with Rose Gray (there is more on them overleaf) – and Lend Lease boss John Spanswick have both sampled the fare at the venue and been impressed.

The smart new restaurant was opened partly in response to a revulsed review by Building columnist and former Times restaurant critic Jonathan Meades of a Bovis canteen, at the BBC White City site in west London. Although the piece, published in last year's Christmas edition, was intended as a lighthearted take on the typical fare served up on site, it touched a nerve at Bovis. "We wanted to see what we could do to move things on in the industry," says Bovis project director Vince Lydon. "We created a brief to provide healthy, nutritionally balanced and properly cooked food. We didn't want to go far in terms of the prices we were offering."

The Stanhope–Bovis joint venture brought in catering firm Zak Hospitality to instigate its new approach to on-site catering. "Zak didn't think we were serious," recalls Lydon. "We agreed to give them control of how to do it." The new venture was pushed through by Zak operations director and chef Kieran Robinson, an energetic and passionate Ulsterman whose experience until now had largely been in corporate catering for firms such as Sodhexo.

Robinson insisted he would choose the equipment he needed, which included a £12,000 state-of-the-art oven. "Bovis and Stanhope have invested heavily in the kitchen. We are determined to change the perception of how a canteen is run for this sector," says Robinson. The result is a menu that ranges from early morning staples such as cooked breakfasts to sandwiches, salads and lunch specials such as grilled Caesar salad and seared tuna (see "The Regent Cafe", opposite).