Carillion

That's what I would do differently.

I would treat every customer, I would take them a bit more cautiously rather than, in my younger days, rush in and go, wow, yeah, I've got a Balfour Beatty, I've got a Carillion, I've got this.

And I'd look at Carillion, yeah, if I wanted to work for them, where are they now? Anyway, so I hope that answers your question.

No, that's good.

So to Mark Esten, which type of customer gives you the biggest headache, Mark? You don't need to name any customers, of course, or anything, but is it the lastminute.com on a Friday? Is it the I'll pay you next Friday and they're always on stop? Is it the guy that smashes everything up and then still wants to come and hire? Which type of customer gives you the biggest headache?

So that's what I love.

So how long were you at Tarmac for? So I was at Tarmac for 14 years, which became Carillion.

And for those who know, I always say it was fine when I left it because they no longer exist.

So yeah, I left them in 2003 to join Skanska.

It was always quite entertaining.

But really taught me about standards, about professionalism, how to conduct yourself at work.

And he was the person who actually persuaded me to leave Carillion and join Skanska

as

Banks instantly tightened their contract terms, because government hadn't done that, and demanded higher interest rates to offset this change in risk.

The next big issue, and the last that really caused problems for PFI, was that several of the big contracting players in the railway, such as Balfour Beatty and Carillion, instantly lost massive revenue streams from the collapse of Railtrack.

These were also companies that formed the backbone of the PFI contractor pool, and suddenly they and others looking on from outside the mess realised that PFI investments were no longer a sure bet for massive

revenue.

Yeah,

exactly.

In the case of one particularly large PFI-involved contractor called Carillion, it helped nudge it towards a form of corporate psychopathy that we'll get to in a few slides' time, possibly next episode, actually.

Oh, good.

And my first job, I landed up in the construction field.

And it was with a multi-billion dollar company, international company, which was called Carillion Construction.

They used to be doing around $5 to $6 billion in annual sales.

So I worked with them in the finance department.

Yeah.

Now...

What did working inside of Carillion, for instance, or ACON teach you about how construction owners actually think? Because you did not work for small companies.

These are large companies.