Construct - Issue 42

Interview

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ON THE FINANCIAL SIDEOF THE BUSINESS

What were you doing before FM Conway?

Why is FM Conway different?

I trained at KPMG in the audit team, then worked on mergers and acquisitions. After that I went to Taylor Woodrow, and was risk management director in their North American business during the merger with George Wimpey. After that I went to Laing O’Rourke, and I also worked at ISG and Interserve at very interesting times for both companies. I’ve always found construction interesting. I like the honesty it engenders – you’ve either built it to specification or you haven’t – and that what we do is actually making the world better. I’ve also served in a Territorial Army Infantry Battalion, and am proud that FM Conway is a signatory of the Armed Forces Covenant and is committed to supporting the Armed Forces community. When I agreed to join the Conway family we didn’t know COVID-19 was coming. But it meant I needed to very quickly get my arms around who the stakeholders were, what might be needed in terms of financing our growth plans, what we were likely to deliver and what the obstacles were. We re-financed the Group in February 2021, securing our long term funding, and we now have three of the four largest banks in the country supporting us, who all want to be part of the FM Conway journey. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, banks were focusing on supporting their existing customers, so for HSBC to join our syndicate at this time is a real vote of confidence. A lot of people joined the business in lockdown, and everyone has done a great job. You joined during lockdown. How's it been?

From a financial point of view, there are a lot of benefits to being a family business; being able to invest for the long term is important. I like the mix of infrastructure services and manufacturing. It’s a business that’s complex, but you can get your arms around it and get to know the people. It’s a nice sized business. It’s amazing that we take raw materials shipped into our own wharfs, with our own bitumen terminal, transport the materials ourselves to our own asphalt plants and from there to our own sites. And I like the fact that the company is pioneering in recycling. People outside our industry think it’s not a green industry, yet we are recycling millions of tonnes of planings and gulley arisings. We are also designing better carbon reducing products. From a financial point of view, self-delivery de-risks the Group and enables you to prevent value leakage. And it means you can do what you say, because you’re in control of what you do, so the clients are getting their roads maintained at the right time at the right price. It also means that everyone’s focused on the same goal, which makes it a lot easier for everyone to align behind the objectives and strategy. If you’re not vertically integrated it’s difficult to get an asphalt plant to open on a Saturday afternoon because a client has an urgent need. We will always look to grow our self-delivery capability, particularly in providing new services to our clients. Why is self-delivery important?

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