FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Going the Extra Mile

In my view, Term Contracts would be the making of F.M. Conway Ltd., even if F.M. Conway himself didn’t realise it yet.

S o, although work was going well and we had solved the I weren’t getting on at all well. We had very different ideas about the future of the business. He was always looking for the big chance. He thought that our fortune would be made with the big one-off jobs. In my experience, short though it was, the opposite was true. We didn’t have the necessary skills for the large-scale jobs like Angel Hill, Cathall Road, or even Throwley Way. They were too risky. That had been demonstrated time and time again. The lesson I had learned from the schools’ job was that we should stick to what we knew: roads and playgrounds, not bridges and subways. I was sure that our future lay with smaller, less ambitious jobs. We should be using all our energy to win jobs like that. In my view, Term Contracts would be the making of F.M. Conway Ltd., even if F.M. Conway himself didn’t realise it yet. And he didn’t. To him, the new relationship with the bank and the Merton Term Contract were small victories. He wasn’t impressed; and I was left feeling distinctly unappreciated. Perhaps I was going through what he had experienced with the Hart brothers twenty years earlier. My solution was the same as his had been. We were heading for a bust-up, and I was ready for it. Then, an opportunity appeared. A contractor called John O’Brien suggested that the two of us go into partnership together. John had the Term Contract for Brent at the time. He seemed to be thinking along the same lines as me. I was tempted. I was ready to go. immediate credit problem, there was another problem closer to home that was preying on my mind. At this period, Dad and

And that would have been it, if Jack Basch hadn’t been around. Jack

48