The Dynamos

Construction is one of modern society’s most energy-intensive activities, and not only in terms of fossil fuels. Working in construction can be draining and you need to stay at peak fitness if you’re going to deal with the job at hand. For nobody is this more important than the construction boss, rising at dawn to attend early morning breakfast meetings and resting only after an evening schmoozing clients or answering late-night emails. In the intervening hours, they must juggle the conflicting demands of high-profile projects and large numbers of disparate employees, placate shareholders and suppliers and be prepared to fly round the world at the drop of a hat. In short, who better to take advice from on keeping your energy levels up?

The main contractor’s lot is perhaps the most stressful, as Vaughan Burnand of Shepherd Construction can testify: “It’s extremely gruelling, just the sheer number of issues you need to be aware of and all the things you have to remember.” Don’t believe him? “If you’re running a £300m enterprise, you’ve got 3500 direct and indirect employees, 50 projects on site, some of which are going all right, some of which are failing, and that’s 50 customers who might be demanding your attention. You’ve got accounts that haven’t been settled, issues with money, marketing, business development, negotiation on new contracts …”

So how does he cope? “Generally, you don’t get selected for the job if you don’t have an appetite for work, self-flagellation …” But how do you maintain that level of activity day in, day out? Burnand says he goes to the gym and plays golf at the weekend, but admits it’s not easy to fit these activities in: “The job sucks away your time – I’d rather be at work at seven in the morning than in the gym. And there’s all the socialising – it’s the only way you can get to know people properly. I’ve only been home three nights in the past month.”

Mike Nightingale, chair of architect Nightingale Associates, also has to do his fair share of corporate entertaining and eating out with clients. Such a rich diet can sap your energy, but Nightingale tries to minimise the effects. “You’ve always got to be polite on the night, but I try not to eat much before or after – I only have one big meal a day. I eat very healthily and I don’t drink much – moderation in all things. I eat fish or vegetarian food and drink lots of orange juice. I have a healthy breakfast and a light lunch. What do I have for breakfast? Bran flakes with an apple cut up and orange juice – although I might have a cooked breakfast if I’m in a nice hotel, but then I won’t have any lunch.”

Nightingale needs to keep fit to keep pace with his fast-growing firm – the staff has tripled to 300 in the past three years. As a result, the structure of the company has changed, with Nightingale giving up the joint chief executive role and appointing several new senior staff to share the burden. That doesn’t lessen the most exhausting part of the job however – the travel. “We’ve got 10 or 11 offices in the UK and one in Dubai. I try and keep travelling down to a minimum but I’m in at least three different centres in a week.” No posh company car for him, though: “I much prefer to go on public transport and work on the train, even if it does take longer. If you’re driving for four hours, it’s just wasted time.”

If running a firm of 300 people is tiring, surely keeping tabs on nearly 14,000 worldwide has got to be something of a challenge? Not a bit of it, says Atkins chief executive Keith Clarke – and he loves his job. But he admits: “The most draining bit is not problem solving, it’s supporting your staff and making judgments about their careers, which you can get easily wrong.”

Keeping an eye on shareholder value and talking to investors takes up a fair amount of Clarke’s time, but he reckons that managing staff is more important: “If you get the people bit right, the money comes in.”

He also has to travel for work, and is often exhausted when he arrives at his destinations. “I always fall asleep at about 2pm in the Far East, halfway through meetings. That’s usually when most of the decisions get made.” (See “Keith Clarke’s travel guide”.)

Clarke recommends avoiding unnecessary work – just because you’re emailed a million reports a day, you don’t have to read them. “You get sent more and more information at the top of an organisation but actually you should be using less – I’m meant to work stuff out without knowing the facts, making decisions before things happen.”

Mark van den Berg, chairman of QS Northcroft, agrees that advances in IT systems, and email in particular, stretches an already long working day. The most exhausting part of van den Berg’s job is complying with government regulations and the demands of Companies House. “It’s all the bureaucracy, red tape and the government legislative framework – it’s not what I became a QS for,” he says. “Last night I was dealing with an email at 11 o’clock – but at least I was at home.”

Even though he’s at the top of the management tree, van den Berg likes to keep his hand in running projects. He’s joined a gym but only finds the time to go twice a month. Instead, he keeps fit by avoiding red meat and rich sauces and walking to meetings. “You can get to most places in London in half an hour. It’s too easy to put on weight and boring to lose it.”

You could say the industry’s most precious reserves of natural energy reside not under the North Sea but in a bowl of bran flakes, a piece of grilled fish and a bottle of mineral water. But there’s one more important ingredient – unbridled enthusiasm. All of the energetic bosses who found time to talk to Building for this article echo Clarke when he says: “It’s just enjoyable by and large, so I don’t find it exhausting. This chief exec lark – we’re the lucky ones.”