Laing O'Rourke

But it's bigger than 13 countries, and the reason it's bigger than 13 countries is because you've got patrons like Ray O'Rourke.

So I had the very privilege, again, because of, of, of BITA, um, so Ray O'Rourke is the, um, one of the co-owners of Laing O'Rourke, which is the biggest privately held construction company in the world.

They operate, um...

They've got 15- uh, at the time they were doing 3 billion in, in, in revenue, 15,000 staff operating on five continents.

Um, and it was when the concept of what BITA was, uh, brought to light, i- it was Pat then introduced me to Ray O'Rourke, his first cousin, right? So this is how this evolves, and I'll always remember going into that meeting with Ray O'Rourke, and I was bricking it because, like, you know, he was just such an icon of the construction industry and possibly the biggest person that you could meet in the industry.

And I went in there with Clive Barker, and, uh, we sat there, and, and Ray was very much poker-faced, as in like, "Okay, tell me what this is all about." And it got to the point where I was like, you know, um, trying to explain what the organization was, but straightaway he recognized that all we wanted from him was him to endorse the very concept of this, you know? And over time, not alone did he endorse it- He embraced it.

He actually put Stephen O'Rourke, uh, onto the board of Bitta, you know, which was an incredible link to be able to then feed back into Laing O'Rourke, uh, which is a big organization out of Select, Expanded, and many parts, um, of, of the business.

Um, so you had to channel the capital knowledge down various avenues, and Stephen was doing that on the board when we go back to starting.

that's definitely something you know procurement teams are on a project for a period of time they're not on there for the full length because they carry out typically during the pre-construction stage and then probably it could be probably a year to two years on a mega scheme or big large-scale project you know they're probably completed within sort of a year to year and a half on that project where after that the project goes on for another two three years so it's then in locking them to go on to other projects as well And

with a company of the size of Laing O'Rourke, across multiple divisions, across multiple regions, and you're going to sit at central.

Yes.

And you're trying to report on all of these things.