How this industry boss is seeking to drive sustainability in Scotland and beyond
“We see a lot of opportunity in Scotland.”
“The biggest buzz I get is when I go out and see our project teams actually delivering the work,” says John Wilkinson, who heads up BAM UK & Ireland. He has been able to do just that with a recent visit to Kilsyth to mark the opening of the construction and engineering giant’s new office there helping serve key projects, including public buildings and infrastructure, and major efforts to decarbonise the UK energy network.
The new office, which has taken about two years to complete, spans 2,000 square metres, can accommodate 140 staff, and has eco-friendly facilities such as 34 chargers for electric vehicles. It has also involved a major upgrade to testing laboratories to boost ground engineering capability.
The firm’s current work north of the Border includes the Cross Tay Link Road in Perth (the new Destiny Bridge over the Tay is nearly completed, with the whole project “another example of how infrastructure projects can really drive economic growth”, says Wilkinson) and Peebles High School, while it has created office schemes like Atlantic Square in Glasgow’s Financial Services District and the 122,000-square-foot Capital Square development in Edinburgh that is home to firms including Scottish legal heavyweight Brodies.
Wilkinson, who holds the title of chief operating officer at the division of Dutch-headquartered Royal BAM Group that started out as a carpentry business in 1869, says the investment in the new facility in North Lanarkshire builds on its long and “rich” heritage in Scotland – where he sees great further potential.
On the construction side, the team is developing Dunfermline Learning Campus in Fife, and a new £72 million net-zero carbon health and social care facility in Parkhead, Glasgow.
And its engineering projects include work on behalf of Perth-headquartered energy giant SSE to create new converter stations, helping to transfer energy from offshore and remote wind generators to the National Grid. “We see that as a big pipeline of opportunity,” says Wilkinson.
SSE is undertaking a £24 billion, decade-long UK investment programme, and said in May of this year that it was boosting UK gross domestic product by £6bn and supporting more than 50,000 UK jobs.
BAM – which has worked on other key infrastructure projects such as controversial rail connectivity scheme HS2 and Thames Tideway – is involved in Eastern Green Link 2, a joint venture between SSE unit SSEN Transmission and National Grid Electricity Transmission to create a major high-voltage direct current (HVDC) subsea transmission cable from Peterhead in Aberdeenshire to Drax in England. BAM is working with Hitachi energy to provide the engineering works and technology for the HVDC converter stations. “That's one of several [similar projects] that are planned across the UK – and even further afield,” says Wilkinson.
He adds: “Scotland does produce a huge amount of that green energy. And therefore, it's how can you distribute that green energy to the right places, to help decarbonise and to help, ultimately, that resilience piece, but also in the future reduce energy bills for households, and for business as well, because we all know what a challenge that's been for us all.”
On the subject of challenges, he says “we've had some pretty difficult years”, citing Covid, conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East, and construction companies going to the wall amid high inflation. According to the Insolvency Service, there were 17 construction company insolvencies in Scotland in May 2024 alone.
But Wilkinson believes his firm and the wider industry have an “exciting” future given some cause for optimism such as inflation having retreated to the 2 per cent Bank of England target. He adds that BAM UK & Ireland that he oversees has a portfolio of just over €3 billion a year, is enjoying a robust pipeline of work, and is helping drive the UK’s levelling-up agenda.
That encompasses transitioning the economy, “and as you naturally do that, things do start to move further north”. He adds: “I think we're now seeing the opportunities being really national, across our pipeline, so that's one of the reasons we decided to make this investment [in Kilsyth], because we see a lot of opportunity in Scotland, we see a lot of employment that could be created as well, because this is all going to need resources. And that's why it's so important that we focus on this social sustainability piece, about how can we upskill and train the people in the regions and the areas of Scotland that we will be working in to be part of that delivery stream.”
BAM even recently welcomed schoolchildren from Kilsyth who came and took part in building a bridge in its car park, for example – while Wilkinson has worked on bridges in the likes of Twechar, Kirkintilloch, and Bonnybridge to help bring about the Forth & Clyde Canal re-opening as part of the multi-million-pound Millennium Link Project.
The businessman himself started his career in 1989 as a trainee engineer and progressed through senior engineer, site-manager, and project-director roles, before gaining his first MD role in 2008. He held senior positions at construction and civil engineering companies Laing O’Rourke, Kier, May Gurney and SNC-Lavalin, before joining BAM in 2020 – and says he likes working in a sector that is “never static”. He stresses the need for a broader obligation to “make an investment into making society better for everybody. That's progress, isn't it. That's what we're here for.”
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