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For a company expecting no more than £ 1.7 billion in sales in 2020, Mace has quite a target for itself over the next half decade.

As part of its business strategy for 2026, the company is hoping for £ 3 billion in sales – a record for the company. The £ 2.35 billion recorded in 2018 was never exceeded. Over the same period, margins are expected to increase by 20% every year.

To achieve its goal, Mace needs an annual revenue growth of around £ 260 million over the next five years. Board chairman Mark Reynolds told Building late last year that it would be on the way and that sales are expected to surpass the £ 2 billion mark by the end of 2021.

Mace also pledges capital investments to create new business units and potential acquisitions over the next five years, and plans to increase its research and development investments Group-wide to up to 3.5% of its annual revenue.

Of the £ 3bn, around £ 2bn is expected to come from the Contracts division, which according to Laing O’Rourke, who himself warned last December that sales for the year ending March 2021 would be below 2bn. GBP may fall, maintaining its status as the second largest private contractor due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mace, who also has an FM and development arm, said £ 500m of the £ 3bn will come from its expanding consulting business, a business that has higher margins than construction but is often overshadowed by the profile of the systems can be contract big brother takes over.

Responsible for the advice is Jason Millett, who is currently with Mace for 13 years after spending two decades with Bovis – first in 1986, four years before Mace started – and later became Bovis Lend Lease.

Our strategy has a strong export track and it is important to capitalize on the strength of our operations in the UK and deploy some of our skills around the world

Hailing from the northwest, Millett expects to hire an additional 1,300 employees, half of whom are from the UK and the number will rise to around 4,000 worldwide. That will be half of the group’s planned 8,000 employees by 2026, with current numbers for the group being around 6,000.

This would cement its place in the top 10 largest consultants in the country, which include the big three Aecom, Arcadis and Turner & Townsend.

Millett is looking to set up overseas and sees the need for the UK’s advisory skills, which have traditionally been more exportable than contracts, as key.

“Our strategy has a strong export track and it is important to capitalize on the strength of our operations in the UK and deploy some of our skills worldwide,” he says. North America and the countries in the Asia-Pacific region that have successfully battled Covid-19, such as Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, are all on his radar.

The global sustainability and low carbon product plans are a once in a lifetime opportunity for construction, according to Millett. “People aren’t ignoring that now,” he adds.

The growth areas closer to home are also expected to include healthcare, housing, infrastructure, manufacturing, and industry.

One task Millett will face in the coming months is deciding how much office space his company will need in the future.

The problem has come to the fore in the past few weeks, with dozens of businesses large and small rewriting previously established requirements.

Lloyds Banking Group plans to lose 20% of its space while HSBC plans to cut 40%. In the construction industry, Aecom and Arcadis recently made headlines when they outlined their future workplace plans.

Aecom has space for around 1,000 employees at its London headquarters in Aldgate on the outskirts of the city. One option it is considering is to sublet some of this space if the requirements change due to the increase in homeworking. Arcadis is moving to a new home on Fenchurch Street this summer, where the capacity will drop from 1,200 people that can fit in its current King’s Cross office to just 400 by the time it crosses town in June.

Mace’s consulting business has 30 offices around the world, and Millett says the footprint will decrease but adds, “We [still] You need to have space for certain tasks to share ideas and customers are expected to know the place. “

If the pandemic has some positive impact, the industry and customers will have recognized the importance of MMC. Mace wants 90% of its work to be delivered with MMC by 2026. “The industry is getting the change at MMC,” he adds. “Some customers are also very progressive. Public sector customers such as the Department of Justice, HS2, the Department of Education. You understand modern methods. “

However, other public sector customers have more pressing issues to resolve. “The local authorities are in a different place. They are more concerned about the budget right now.”

He says the industry has had to live with some of the new rules it has had to enact since the pandemic hit the UK seriously for a while a year ago this month. “Social distancing is not going to go away completely [but] Vaccines are becoming the norm. “The pandemic has accelerated the industry’s response to its historic productivity challenge,” he adds. “Productivity remains the greatest challenge. People understand that, but the industry can respond well. “