Life is Sweett
1 June 2015
Published in Partnerships Bulletin (http://www.partnershipsbulletin.com/interviews/view/159)
Douglas McCormick is facing one of the biggest challenges of his career as he seeks to
turn around Sweett Group. It’s early days, but there is progress, he tells Paul Jarvis
Douglas McCormick, the new chief executive at Sweett Group, has been in the job for just under three
months. Having arrived from Atkins in March, this is his first chief executive role and there is plenty for
him to get to grips with.
At the time of our meeting, the company is still going through its strategic review process – something
that was started at the back end of 2014, before McCormick joined, and is designed to help Sweett
return to prosperity. That process was triggered after the consultancy issued a profit warning in
November, saying that its annual results would be “materially below market expectations”. Add to that
the fact that since August last year the company has had a new chairman, new senior independent
director and McCormick arriving as the new chief executive, and it is clear there is plenty of work to be
done.
McCormick, though, cuts a relaxed figure and is clearly relishing the opportunity to put things right at
Sweett.
“Sweett fundamentally is a solid business, with a great range of clients, clever staff, and a good
spread across sectors,” he says. “I think the future is really quite optimistic, and I wouldn’t have taken
the job if I hadn’t been comfortable that the issues that we have, which are real, can be dealt with
properly, and that this – which is a really strong business – can go from strength to strength.”
So where will this strength be focused? The biggest news to come out of the strategic review was a
plan to put the firm’s Asian business up for sale. McCormick and his team are instead looking west
from their London headquarters when it comes to expansion.
“In Canada, we’ve just announced a partnership with Pelican Woodcliff in Toronto,” he explains.
“That’s with an eye to the Canadian market but also to the rest of the North American market. The
PPP market for Canada is of real interest.”
Future development in these markets is likely to come through more collaborations and partnerships
such as this, rather than acquisitions.
“We’re already involved in the US market through our joint venture, VVA Sweett, and I see that as the
first port of call to look at what opportunities there are. But equally we will look for other partners who
can complement what we can do.
“It is like dating: finding somebody that you like the look of who does similar things and then finding
something to do together, and doing that successfully. Once you’ve done one thing successfully you
build a relationship that allows you to do other things equally successfully.”
McCormick is also keen to talk up the opportunities still available in Europe, including the firm’s home
market of the UK. “One should never underestimate the strength of the UK. The strength of the UK
market is enormous and the investment in infrastructure, commercial, retail, residential, health,
education – when you look across the spectrum of sectors in the UK there is a huge amount to do
here.”
While much will depend on what the new government decides to do, McCormick is hopeful that there
will be a place for private finance of public infrastructure. “What will be interesting to see is what they
intend to do about public investment and how they intend to arrange the financing for that,” he says.
McCormick is no stranger to PPPs. Having worked as a chartered surveyor at Gleeds, McCormick
moved to London in 2005 with Atkins to join the Metronet PPP programme. Despite the ultimate
collapse of the initiative, McCormick remembers his time on that job fondly.
“It was a great challenge,” he begins. “I’m really sorry that Metronet didn’t work because I think it
could have worked had there been a will on all sides to do so. I don’t attach blame to any one side. It
just didn’t work.”
From Metronet, McCormick joined Atkins’ rail business where he was the trading director for four
years before becoming group managing director. It was during his time working in Atkins’ rail division
that McCormick developed an enthusiasm for collaborative working concepts. Network Rail
introduced BS11000, the new British Standard for collaborative working, as an objective measure of
how to work collaboratively.
“The standard is about objectively measuring how collaborative you are: identifying the right people to
work with; formally setting up that relationship – looking at who does what – and quite importantly,
how do you end that relationship? So you create a model to deliver what’s in front of you with an exit
plan so that you don’t all get to the end and wonder what you do next,” he explains. “Having got that
defined, it allows people to concentrate on the task, not try to reinvent the rules all the time as you go
through the project.
“Previously I have rolled out and become accredited for BS11000, and I can see us doing that with
Sweett,” he says.
McCormick also sits on the main board for the Institute of Collaborative Working and is passionate
about the idea that “you can do more together than you can on your own”, which is why he is keen to
roll out BS11000 at Sweett.
He argues that in a complex world such as infrastructure delivery, the idea that one organisation can
provide everything that a client needs is naïve. “The need to find people who can work alongside you I
think is critical,” he continues. “As we face skills shortages, I am never likely to have enough people to
do what I want to do, so I need to find friends who I can work with.”
Skills is another area that is taxing McCormick at present. Like many in the construction industry as a
whole, he is concerned about the lack of young people coming through the system. It’s an area where
he hopes Sweett can take something of a lead.
“We would want to be supportive as apprenticeships become an equal and valid option to academic
study,” he says. “We have to look at apprentices so that they are not the poor relation to a degree, but
actually they are another means of getting people into work. We need to look at how we partner
business alongside education.”
McCormick sits as a commissioner for the UK Commission for UK Employment and Skills. “We are
absolutely clear that this has to be addressed,” he continues. “It has to be owned by employers, and
government has to enable that.”
To this end, McCormick sees a potentially strong role for local enterprise partnerships (LEPs). “They
are still in their infancy but we see them beginning to establish strong links. What you get from that is
a local economy that starts to balance its skills needs with its educational providers. I think there is
something to learn from that,” he says.
For Sweett, what all this means is a new focus on how the company grows. “One of my questions is
what do we do about resources? How are we organised? I think you’ll see growth from us on that
front.”
In the UK, McCormick is determined to focus on continuous improvement. “For example, we are
clearly very strong in cost management, we’re strong in project management – could we be stronger
in that? I think we probably could,” he says.
“We do building surveying, but I think there are opportunities to grow this service. And there are other
complementary skills that sit alongside what we currently deliver that could enhance our offerings.”
Clearly, there is a lot more to come from the company under McCormick’s ambitions.