Simon Linford and his passion for buildings

Mar 20 2009 By Tom Fleming

With a passion for ruins and bell-ringing, Simon Linford is not your most conventional chief executive. Tom Fleming caught up with him to discover how he is transforming the family business.

‘Entrepreneurial’ is a word that seems to crop up rather regularly when discussing Simon Linford.

Spend an hour in his company and you realise that it’s an apt description. The 42-year-old head of Linford Group has a passion and a zeal for his business which is contagious. This energy, combined with his concentration on new and far-reaching ideas, has proved a powerful conduit for change for the 130-year old contractor business.

Until Simon took over, Linford Group had a reputation which focused rather more on its commitment to restoration and craft skills than on an ability to construct the next generation of new sustainable buildings.

His vision, when he joined three years ago, was to correct this imbalance once and for all.

The result is that he has overseen perhaps the most transformative period in the company’s history, blazing an eco-build trail with a pioneering environmental agenda.

On one level, this probably explains his penchant for using buses (he was last seen running for one at the end of our interview), and his decision to drive a Smart Car, rather than a swanky executive saloon.

More particularly, it has seen the company invest in Lime Technology, a company which manufactures sustainable products such as Hemcrete®. And, the setting up of a new business within Linford called C Zero™, which will target affordable social housing schemes, focusing initially on using Hemcrete. It’s radical, and the product of new thinking.

Surprisingly, Simon is a Chartered Accountant by profession, with no previous experience in the building trade before he took over the running of Linford Group.

So, what attracted him initially to join the family firm?

He smiles broadly: “Oh, I wanted to work for Linford as a child – I had building in the blood!”

The lack of any direct industry experience was never an issue. “I knew I had a team of excellent directors with decades of experience between them.

“My contribution to Linford at the time was passion, a fresh outlook, and the knowledge of how to lead a company from 20 years of management at all levels. It also helps that I am passionate about architecture, which seems surprisingly rare among builders.”

So, if he had to choose, what is his favourite building? “I don’t think I could single one out, although I have always liked 333 West Wacker Drive, Chicago. I am a fan of tall buildings and I love Chicago.”

Not an old building then?

“I love big symmetrical Palladian mansions like Holkham Hall but I’m also a fan of modern architecture. And I am intrigued by ruins. I have been known to pull off the M1 and just go and wander around the ruined Sutton Scarsdale Hall, wondering what it would have been like.

“To me, old buildings have the history and the intrigue, but building new ones is a fascinating and rewarding process. I envy our project managers who can stand back and say “I built that.””

No surprise then, as someone with clear ideas about design, that he’s very conscious of the legacy that Linford leaves behind every time it completes a new project, with quality and pride uppermost in his mind.

“A question I always ask is, does this building pass the passenger seat test? Can I point out one of our buildings to a passenger in my car as we pass it, and feel proud?”

When asked what his ambitions are in this direction, he answers without hesitation: “To build a building that wins the Stirling Prize or a new building that gets listed.”

It’s hard, in the face of all this passion, to think that Simon’s earlier training seemed to be leading him down a rather different career path.

He read electrical engineering at Queen Mary College, London, before a single event changed his life. “I read Tom Peter’s book In Search of Excellence, about what makes great businesses, and was absolutely hooked.”

He left university and went to Arthur Andersen to train as an accountant, and credits the firm with shaping much of his management thinking: “I learnt a lot from them: one key thing was to keep in touch with people who have left the business because you never know when you might work together again.

“I hate losing people, but it happens to any business. We must be doing something right though because we’ve had business from two ex-employees in the last 12 months alone.”

He’s clearly a very visible, dynamic presence around the company.

“I need to understand the experiences of the teams who work for us, which means that, yes, I have driven the crew bus to site on occasion. If you’ve not experienced it, you can’t fully understand it.”

And it’s not usual to find the CEO standing on the touchlines of staff football matches in freezing conditions, cheering his teams on.

“Like other companies that work across more than one centre, we needed to find some way to keep everyone connected, particularly the guys on the sites who don’t usually attend company functions. Football provided the perfect answer. The guys also seem to appreciate me being there shouting encouragement,”

He laughs when asked if he ever switches off. “The Blackberry is on all the time and I’m always working, even on holiday. If people want decisions then I don’t want them to have to wait:”

He does relax however, somewhat unexpectedly by bell-ringing, a passion he has pursued for nearly 30 years. “My father was a clergyman, so I grew up in the church. Bell-ringing is highly technical, as well as being physical, and three hours of ringing, I find, is not only therapeutic, it’s a great way to allow ideas to flow.”