Hamish Gray

Hamish has spent most of his career building things. A civil engineer, he spent 17 years with main contractors, with a hand in almost everything, from stadia, water infrastructure and data centres to roading, bridges and rail tunnels. That gives him a deep feel for how things are actually built, and for the problems that come with it.

He joined RCP in 2021 to lead its pre-construction team. His job is to find and resolve issues at the pen-and-paper stage, before they become costly on site, sequencing and staging a project efficiently and running the build through in his head to see how the phases fit together. He is good at translating the technical detail of a project into something a client can understand and act on.

With his builder's hat on he can read a contractor's methodology and programme, test contractual claims, and run design reviews, exploring buildability, flagging risks or missing detail, weighing alternative options and testing that the proposal actually meets the client's objectives. He puts real value on time in the field, on the view that issues get missed from behind a desk.

For Hamish, pre-construction starts with understanding how a client operates and what they are trying to achieve, and shaping the plan around that. The challenge, he says, is striking the balance between planning and doing, putting in the hard yards up front without letting it become a roadblock to getting started.