Sir Robert McAlpine
<templatestyles src="Module:Hatnote/styles.css"></templatestyles>
 |
|
| Private company | |
| Industry | Engineering / Construction |
| Founded | 1869 |
| Headquarters | Hemel Hempstead, England |
| Revenue | £862 million (2014)[1] |
| £(89.7) million (2014)[1] | |
| Website | www.sir-robert-mcalpine.com |
Sir Robert McAlpine is a private British company headquartered in Hertfordshire. It carries out engineering and construction for the oil and gas, petrochemical, power generation, nuclear, pharmaceutical, defence, chemical, water and mining industries.
Contents
History
Sir Robert McAlpine, 1st Baronet who founded the eponymous company was born in 1847 in the Scottish village of Newarthill near Motherwell. From the age of seven he worked in the nearby coal mines, leaving at 16 to become an apprentice bricklayer. Later, working for an engineer, he progressed to being foreman before starting to work on his own account at the age of 22 (1869). He had no capital other than that he could earn himself and his first contract involving the employment of other men had to be financed by borrowing £11 from the butcher. From there, McAlpine enjoyed rapid success; the early contracts centred on his own trade of bricklaying and by 1874 he was the owner of two brickyards and an employer of 1,000 men.[2] (It was on one of the housing estates he built that he first experimented with using concrete blocks as well as bricks (from which he earned the nickname 'concrete Bob').[3]
With the capital he had acquired, McAlpine determined to build a garden city at Hamilton, South Lanarkshire. Relying now on the income from his estate, McAlpine’s attention moved away from his contracting business towards self-education. However, the financial panic following the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank in 1878 virtually wiped out McAlpine financially: his mortgages were called in but his debtors did not pay him.[2]
The liabilities from the Hamilton estate were threatening the construction business and to protect it, Robert took his clerk into partnership, trading under the name McAlpine & Co; the clerk was bought out not long after. McAlpine’s first large contract was a building for the Singer Manufacturing Company in 1883 and the profit from that enabled him to pay off his remaining debts. Almost immediately he faced further financial difficulties. Winning a contract for the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway without the necessary technical knowledge, the subsequent rebuilding work and litigation meant another fresh start.[2]
In 1887, Robert took his two eldest sons, Robert junior and William, out of school to help him, with Malcolm and Alfred following soon after, and they did much to rationalise the firm’s administration and finances. Undaunted by his earlier experience, McAlpine took on further railway contracts, this time successfully, including the Mallaig Extension Railway and the Glasgow Subway. There was an increasingly wide range of building and civil engineering contracts but the firm was almost brought to its knees again with the construction of the Methil Docks between 1909 and 1913. It was argued that this led to a much more cautious approach to risk on the part of the sons – if not the father.[4]
The inter-war period saw the firm focusing solely on construction. Gray wrote that Sir Robert McAlpine “seemed to have been involved in every major building and civil engineering project that ever hit the headlines of the day.” They included docks, harbours, power stations, factories; the Wembley Stadium and the Dorchester Hotel were notable examples.[4] The Dorchester was of particular interest. When the client was unable to pay for the construction works, the company took possession of the completed building and operated it on its own account.[5]
In November 1934, Sir Robert died aged 87. Two weeks later the eldest son, the new Sir Robert, also died. William was appointed Chairman while Alfred remained in charge of the operation in the north-west subsidiary, where he had been since 1918. These two deaths must have had some impact on what followed. The two London partners argued that the recession was impacting more on the north than the south and proposed closing Alfred’s company. Alfred, however, did not wish to return to London and, on an informal basis at first, the two businesses were run separately. The separation was formalised in 1940 and the northern business was renamed Sir Alfred McAlpine.[4] During the Second World War the company was one of the contractors engaged in building the Mulberry harbour units.[6]
The two McAlpine firms had non-compete arrangements and sites had a common “McAlpine” board irrespective of which firm it was. When both companies first went public, they did so under the names Newarthill for Robert and Marchwiel for Alfred. These arrangements continued until 1983.[7] In 2003, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd. sued Alfred McAlpine plc over the use of the family name and won.[8] The dispute centred on Alfred McAlpine's intention to trade under the name "McAlpine". There was previously a long-standing agreement within the McAlpine family not to make such a change but, following the death of Alfred McAlpine, the board of Alfred McAlpine sought to make the change in any event. The effect of the judgment was to prevent Alfred McAlpine trading under the name "McAlpine". In 2008, Alfred McAlpine plc was acquired by Carillion and dismantled, thus making the "name war" irrelevant.[9]
The Irish Connection
From the 1930s onwards, the company employed large numbers of Irish who had come to England looking for work. The harsh working conditions with which McAlpine's management treated their labourers has gone down in Irish emigrant folklore. The song "McAlpine's Fusiliers" (written by Dominic Behan and made famous by "The Dubliners") described the realities of life on the building site for many Irish expatriates.[10]
Structure
The company is organised on a regional basis.[11]
It has offices in Hemel Hempstead, London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The plant section is based in Kettering.
Major projects
Projects undertaken by the company have included:
- Glenfinnan Viaduct completed in 1901[12]
- Maine Road Stadium completed in 1923[13]
- Wembley Stadium completed in 1924[12]
- Dorchester Hotel in London completed in 1931[12]
- Odeon Leicester Square completed in 1937[14]
- The Shell Centre completed in 1962[14]
- Newcastle Civic Centre completed in 1968[15]
- Hyde Park Barracks, London completed in 1970[14]
- Royal National Theatre completed in 1977[14]
- St. Enoch Centre completed in 1989[12]
- Millennium Dome completed in 1999[12] which the company also redeveloped as The O2[12]
- Millennium Bridge completed in 2000[16]
- ExCeL Exhibition Centre completed in 2000[17]
- Eden Project completed in 2001[18]
- Wishaw General Hospital completed in 2001[19]
- Imperial War Museum North completed in 2002[20]
- Bull Ring, Birmingham completed in 2003[21]
- Emirates Stadium completed in 2006[22]
- White River Place development in St Austell town centre completed in 2009[23]
- Olympic Stadium for London 2012 completed in 2011[24]
Controversies
Sir Robert McAlpine funded the initial establishment of the Consulting Association in 1993, providing £20,000, around half of which was used to buy a blacklist database from the Economic League and hire one of its former employees, Ian Kerr, as manager.[25][26] Company director Callum McAlpine served as chairman of the Consulting Association for some years before it became publicly implicated in a construction industry blacklisting scandal in 2009 and was wound up. Subsequently Sir Robert McAlpine was one of eight businesses involved in the 2014 launch of the Construction Workers Compensation Scheme,[27] though this was condemned as a "PR stunt" by the GMB union, and described by the Scottish Affairs Select Committee as an "an act of bad faith".[28]
On 11 May 2016, major companies, including Sir Robert McAlpine, issued an "unreserved and sincere" apology in the high court to hundreds of workers for putting them on the illegal blacklist and denying them work over two decades. The companies agreed to pay sums ranging from £25,000 to £200,000 to 771 people under out-of-court settlements to avoid a trial, while accepting that "their secret vetting operation should never have happened". However, evidence disclosed before the settlement has led many of the victims to claim that there was an illegal attempt by executives at Sir Robert McAlpine to destroy evidence and cover up the involvement of key individuals when the blacklisting was discovered in 2009. The targets of the victims' intended criminal complaint include Cullum McAlpine, a director of Sir Robert McAlpine and a member of the founding family, who was chairman of the blacklisting organisation, known as the Consulting Association, when it was formed in 1993. Sir Robert McAlpine's head of human resources, David Cochrane, who was a later chairman of the association, is also at the centre of the complaint. Both deny involvement in destroying any relevant files and categorically deny attempting to pervert the course of justice.[29]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 J Saxon Childers, Robert McAlpine A Biography (1925)
- ↑ “McAlpine The First Hundred Years” (1969)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Tony Gray, The Road to Success Alfred McAlpine 1935-1985 (1987)
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Hartcup, p. 94
- ↑ Wellings, Fred: Dictionary of British Housebuilders (2006) Troubador. ISBN 978-0-9552965-0-5,
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Rob Evans, Severin Carrell and Helen Carter, The Guardian, 27 May 2009, Man behind illegal blacklist snooped on workers for 30 years
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Sources
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
