How Bam came top of Google's search
12 July 2013 | By Adam Branson
PrintEmail More Sharing ServicesShare Share on twitterShare on facebookShare on linkedinComment Save Bam Construct UK boss Graham Cash tells Building what winning one of the most prestigious construction jobs of the year means for the contractor
This isn’t a normal builder’s presentation,” says Graham Cash, chief executive of contractor Bam Construct UK. Cash stops talking as an animated presentation starts up on a big screen mounted on the wall of one of Bam’s site offices on the King’s Cross Central development in central London. A disembodied commentator takes over the narration. “Imagine if you could build the best building in the world - where would you start?” it asks. “To build something truly groundbreaking you need to start with a very special place; a place with history and a bright future …”
The presentation concludes about five minutes later and is, no doubt about it, pretty slick stuff. Cash, a modestly spoken man not given to hyperbole and without a hint of smugness, certainly looks pleased with it. And well he might. This is, after all, the presentation that helped Bam win the £300m contract to build internet giant Google’s AHMM-designed headquarters in King’s Cross, one of the most coveted contracts to be awarded in the last year. But it could also be the presentation that puts BAM firmly in the top tier of contractors able to bid and win the biggest and most prestigious jobs. So how did Bam, whose largest single contract before this was the £170m Laboratory of Molecular Biology for the Medical Research Council, manage to pull off such a prestigious win? And does the win really buy it a place at the top table?
Bam is certainly not the only contractor to have a slick bid team, but its Google presentation is undoubtedly impressive. For a start, it is clear that its animators studied Google’s irreverent, quirky design style closely in order to come up with something that could have been put together by the company itself. Bam’s bid was then delivered to Google in a plain white box, unadorned with any of the contractor’s usual regalia. Nestled on top of the bid documents was a tablet computer and, when the box was opened, a magnetic strip in the lid automatically started up the device, which immediately began playing the animation. All of the documents in the box could be accessed via the tablet in a maximum of three clicks. Oh, and it goes without saying that the tablet wasn’t manufactured by Apple. As Cash says, not a normal builder’s presentation.
The outside bet
Cash acknowledges that many in the construction industry were surprised when Bam won the Google job. The £917.2m turnover company, owned by contracting giant Royal Dutch Bam, is no minnow, for sure, but it has not tended to compete for this size of contract, and was up against some of the biggest names in construction: Skanska, Carillion and Balfour Beatty. “I think that people might have viewed us as the outside horse,” he says. “But the way we handled it was about putting the right team together. It wasn’t about Bam - it was about what was right for Google. That team was briefed that we wanted everything to be different, not only in terms of the presentation but in terms of the interview and everything else we did on the project.”
Cash knows what it means for the firm, and says it is part of a deliberate strategy to move the company on: “I’d like to be in the league with the best not the biggest, and I think that the win does do that for us.”
Such was the surprise at Bam’s win, however, that some commentators wondered whether Bam’s relationship with Argent - the development manager and erstwhile developer at King’s Cross from whom Google acquired its development plot - hadn’t played a part in the decision. After all, Bam is already building on several sites on the King’s Cross scheme and has a relationship with Argent going back 20 years. Surely that connection helped?
Cash isn’t having any of it, pointing out that both Kier and Carillion are also on a design-and-build framework on King’s Cross Central. “Kier didn’t make the shortlist and they’ve worked with Argent forever,” he says. “Ourselves and Carillion did make the shortlist, but at the end of the day I think it was down to us and Skanska. So at a different stage a different one of the framework contractors didn’t progress. I think with Google, we just won.”
Bam’s relatively robust financial performance can be attributed to a range of factors, Cash believes. While many of the company’s competitors sought to diversify the services they offer, Bam “stayed firm and solid behind what we did”. It is also clear that Bam’s bidding strategy has held it in good stead through avoiding clients that are simply seeking the lowest bid regardless of quality.
“We’ve been very careful about the company that we keep,” says Cash. “We’re sometimes economical, but on some recent projects we’ve won from third or fourth place on the price ranking because the team we sent in knew the project inside out and offered an excellent service.”