Brendan Kerr is not your typical demolition contractor. Instead, on the way to becoming one of the UKās top entrepreneurs, he has turned the ādeconstructionā business into a respectable profession ā and one thatās central to the Cityās most glamorous developments.
You can always rely on the offices of a demolition contractor to have some good photos on the walls, and the boardroom of Keltbray is no exception. Thereās a particularly arresting time-lapse sequence of a section of elevated dual carriageway being blown up ā or rather, down, in demolition-speak. The first picture shows puffs of smoke as the explosives go off, then there are a few showing the bridge gradually sagging in the middle, and finally, it collapses into a cloud of dust. Strangely, the floor of the room is also dusty.
One of the first messages Brendan Kerr, Keltbrayās managing director, wants to get across is that the pictures donāt tell the whole story about Keltbray. āWe donāt always enjoy the title demolition contractor,ā he says in a soft Northern Irish accent, before going on to explain that the firm is capable of taking care of everything below the ground floor of a building, as well as some of the bits above. āWe see ourselves as engineers and technical constructors,ā he says. āWhat we do best is temporary engineering, excavation, ground remediation and the substructure. Obviously within that lies a large element of demolition.ā
This approach clearly has its merits. When Kerr joined the firm back in 1989, Keltbrayās turnover was Ā£7m; last year, the figure was more than Ā£100m. Kerr aspires to grow this 50%, but wonāt be pinned to a timetable. āKeltbray came from the background of āgot crane, got large ball, letās knock things downā,ā says Peter Rogers, the technical director of Stanhope, who has known Kerr for 15 years. āBrendan has professionalised what is traditionally the rough end of the industry by turning the firm into an engineering and deconstruction company.ā
This change of image is also exemplified by Kerrās chosen mode of transport. Rather than stewing in traffic in a chief execās limo, Kerr travels in his personal London taxi cab, complete with licensed driver, which means he can zip down bus lanes quite legitimately. Never one to waste a marketing opportunity, Kerr has had āKeltbrayā emblazoned on the side of his shiny white vehicle.
The other strand to Kerrās success is that everyone seems to know and like him, a popularity formalised when he was declared Personality of the Year at ŠŌ°ÉµēĢØās 2007 Specialist Contractor awards.
According to Rogers, Kerr has a āfantasticā address book. āIf you go out for lunch with Brendan itās good fun. Heās got good connections, heās a nice guy and runs a bloody good company. You never get the feeling heās invited you out to lunch because you are a useful contact.ā
Kerr, who is now 42, built up this success and popularity in classic Dick Whittington style. He was struggling as a carpenter in Northern Ireland when he decided it might be easier to make a go of things in London in the booming eighties. He was kicking around in various agency jobs, working as a site supervisor, when he got a job with McGee, the company that has ended up as his main competitor. āWhen I started, McGee was a very professional company with high standards,ā he says. āWhen I joined Keltbray, which was a much smaller company, I took a lot of inspiration from what McGee had done.ā
Keltbray poached Kerr from McGee in 1989 and started him off as a project manager. In 1994 he was approached by an entrepreneur to set up his own demolition business. Keltbrayās four shareholders offered Kerr a 20% stake in the business if he stayed on. āThis was an opportunity to grow a company that was already established,ā he says.
We donāt always enjoy the title demolition contractor. We see ourselves as engineers and technical constructors
He has since bought out his fellow shareholders and since 2003 is now the sole shareholder, with a personal wealth of Ā£32m. One poll last year ranked him as the 35th top entrepreneur in the UK. He is keen to stress he isnāt the big bad boss; rather he runs the company as a family business on an open book basis, with profit-sharing among the six directors and senior staff.
āHe is not a technical person but has a real knack for what is needed to make a business work,ā says Rogers. Kerr has made a point of attracting top people to the firm. He rattles off a series of names which includes Stuart Marchand, a former Costain man who runs Wentworth House, Keltbrayās engineering division, and according to Kerr is an expert on temporary works and facade retention. He also recently hired Damien McDonnell, a former Ministry or Defence scientist, to assess and develop new technologies.
The commercial market has been key to the firmās growth, with most work coming from repeat business from major developers, end users and contractors. At the moment the firm is on site on four big projects in the City of London, including the Shard, the Pinnacle, the Heron Tower and the Walkie-Talkie. Some of these havenāt been easy. For instance, the Shard was delayed because of problems with funding, although Kerr insists the demolition of the buildings on site is carrying on as usual. Soft stripping has started, he says, in preparation for the main demolition.
He goes very quiet on the subject of the Pinnacle, where Hiscox, an insurance firm that occupies the neighbouring building, has sought to restrict demolition work owing to what it says is excessive vibration. āItās inevitable that there could be vibration as a result of any demolition,ā says Kerr, adding that this type of complaint is extremely rare. He quickly moves on to how Keltbray has swept the field on the Considerate Constructors awards front.
Isnāt this reliance on the commercial market a bit risky, given the economic storm clouds hanging over it? Kerr thinks not. āI think itās inevitable there will be a slowdown in that sector, but we have a reasonably robust order book for the next 12 to 18 months,ā he says. āWeāre also taking our expertise into other sectors so weāre not vulnerable to market shift in one of them.ā
The firm is active in the PFI and industrial work and has added three new ones. The first two of these are rail and waste management ā for example, Keltbray has formed a joint venture with soil cleaning specialist AWS, which involves shipping contaminated soil over to Belgium on barges to be cleaned. The third new sector is nuclear work. The firm has already done one nuclear project, the decommissioning of an experimental reactor called Dragon in Winfrith, Dorset for the UK Atomic Energy Authority ā¦ but isnāt this even riskier than the commercial sector? āWe are not involved in the fizzy end of nuclear, which is extremely specialist and scientific. We want to be involved in the structural dismantling and clean-up elements of the stations,ā says Kerr. āItās new territory and a new challenge.ā
Deconstructionism
What building have you taken the most pleasure in demolishing?
About 10 years ago we knocked down a very ugly post-war office block in Victoria, central London, called Shelley House. It was a horrible, cheap infill development made of reinforced concrete, and it was good to see the back of it.
Are there any buildings you regretted knocking down?
Not really, because most beautiful buildings are listed, so you retain the facades and important parts of the external structure. Listed elements inside are dismantled and put aside for the new building.
What has been your most challenging job?
The Royal Opera House was particularly challenging because it involved demolition, facade retention and major underpinning. We commenced the underpinning when the building was still fully operational, working with small excavators and concrete one corridor away from where Darcey Bussell was rehearsing.
We had to retain the facade on Floral Street and the auditorium as it was grade I-listed. We built a big temporary structure between the stage and auditorium to protect the auditorium from damage and in the fly-tower behind the stage as there is nothing between the basement and the top of the building to work off. We also had to survey and dismantle the grade I-listed Floral Hall and put it aside for reconstruction.
What has been your most exciting job?
When we demolished an old power station at Port Sunlight for Unilever we had to demolish two huge chimneys. We blew these down with explosives, which was exhilarating.
I brought my children, who were 12 and 13 at the time, along to push the detonator. Because of regulations they actually pushed a false one, although they thought it was the real thing.
What is the future of demolition?
We are seeing constant advancement in machine technology. We run 80 conventional excavators and six Brokks, which are low-weight machines with a high output ability. A four-tonne Brokk can do the work of a 20-tonne regular machine and they run on electricity and are robotic. We see the future being robotic, predominantly for health and safety reasons, taking the man away from the immediate workface.
Postscript
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