From financial analysis to executive interviews to innovative building materials, the most read Construction News long-reads of 2024 – as viewed by subscribers and others logged into accounts using the website – were a highly diverse collection of articles.
9. Unbalanced mix: the lack of diversity on the top 20 UK firm’s exec boards
In July, Keith Cooper’s analysis of the 20 largest construction firms’ boards found that women are still underrepresented and ethnic diversity is woefully lacking.
According to the Parker Review, named after Laing O’Rourke chair Sir John Parker, the overwhelming majority of leading UK firms now have at least one ethnic minority director on their boards. But CN found that the boards of 13 out of the 20 contractors are all-white and just seven of the 194 board members are from a BAME background. Of the seven, only one identifies as black.
8. McLaren boss: ‘We don’t want to forget who we are’
Paul Heather at the 318 Oxford Street site
McLaren chief executive Paul Heather told CN Deputy Editor Ben Vogel about his belief in the need to keep in touch with its roots in industrial logistics work in an interview published in August.
He also highlighted an emerging industry-wide challenge: “Projects are taking longer and longer to start. I’d say that in the past five years the average time to start on site after a contract award has doubled from three to six months.”
7 Nine future building materials
From bricks made of mushrooms to energy-generating paint, Adam Branson took a look at some of the innovative building materials and products set to transform the industry in future.
5. What is going wrong with the transformation of the building control profession?
In February, with less than two months to go until the then deadline for registering the competence of building-control inspectors, the system appeared to be in chaos.
Construction News investigated the problems that were occurring, looking at how easy it is to transform an unregulated profession into a regulated one.
3. Andre Redinger: The man who almost bought ISG
Andre Redinger
In September, CN Editor Colin Marrs landed an exclusive interview with Andre Redinger, after the South African’s attempt to buy ISG fell through and the contractor went into administration.
2. A mixed bag: the highest-paid executives in construction
Joshua Stein revealed the top 20 highest paid executives at listed construction companies in October. His analysis showed that some executives have seen their pay packages fall while others were celebrating theirs reach unprecedented new heights.
Industry commentators said that rewarding directors for strong performance is a good thing, as it can drive further strong performance.
The analysis of headline numbers also revealed substantial conditional bonus packages that take into account sustainability as well as workplace health and safety performance.
1. CN100 2024: Snakes & ladders
Rising turnover and slumping profit characterised the CN100 2024 index of top UK contractors, but the outlook remained broadly positive, the September analysis found.
Ben Vogel presented the definitive rundown of contractor financial performance ranking the top 100 in order of turnover and examining how and why were their revenue, profit and other financial indicators were affected by factors such as stalled construction output and repeated interest rate rises.
