Hands across the sea: The career journey of Sisk’s CEO

Sisk COO Steven McGee reflects on his varied career on both sides of the Irish Sea

Steven McGee’s journey in construction bears out the adage that variety is the spice of life. His career spanned a range of roles and responsibilities until he took up his current position as UK and Ireland chief operating officer (COO) at John Sisk & Son in August 2023.

Born in the UK to an Irish father and English mother, McGee moved to Ireland at the age of five. “I was raised in Ireland, but from the age of 18, I was constantly travelling between Ireland and the UK,” he tells Construction News from Sisk’s office in an industrial estate near St Albans.

McGee started his career as a surveyor in Belgium, the UK and Ireland, but he soon transitioned into operational management. “I’ve had the chance to see construction from different sides – whether it’s how a developer packages a project financially or how subcontractors balance their books. It’s given me a well-rounded insight into the drivers for different stakeholders in a project,” he says.

“The variety of what we do, from stadiums and infrastructure to tall buildings, keeps us agile”

Steven McGee, John Sisk & Son

Each new experience has provided valuable lessons. In his seven-year stint at Irish contractor Stewart Construction, for instance, McGee learned about the operational and financial dynamics of construction.

He also gained insight into the differences between regional and national contracting. “In regional contracting, you need to be an all-rounder. You work on a lot of public sector projects, but you also need to be flexible for private developments. It’s a very different approach compared to national contractors who can focus on larger, more specific projects.”

In 2015, McGee took on a new challenge by joining Ardmore Group as construction director, where he project-managed London jobs such as the £185m Four Seasons hotel at Tower Hill. “That project was a turning point. It was the first time I had been site-based in 10 years, and it allowed me to reconnect with the intricacies of project delivery,” he explains.

Two years later, McGee moved to ISG to take charge of major refurbishments and new-builds in Central London. He notes that the main lesson from his five years at ISG was in managing risk. “The construction industry often struggles with the balance of risk transfer. Contractors are expected to manage risks that aren’t always within their control,” he says.

His experience in navigating these challenges would serve him well when he moved to Sisk, where he became COO for the firm’s Irish operations in June 2022. McGee says it was “very interesting” to make the change from his London role at ISG to Sisk (“a market leader in a geography”), but he barely spent a year in the post before a broader role beckoned.

In his current role, McGee oversees large, complex projects such as the £230m Wembley Park development in London and Manchester City’s £300m Etihad Stadium expansion. On his watch, the firm also completed the £71m Isle of Man Ferry Terminal in Liverpool, which began operations in June this year. And in September, Sisk was one of three contractors selected to deliver a £600m brownfield regeneration project in Bermondsey, south east London.

“Geographically, we cover the whole of the UK, but we also cover many different project types, from infrastructure and rail to buildings. Also, the projects that we take on in the UK are very, very large projects. So that’s a differentiator for us in the UK [compared to Ireland]. The variety of what we do, from stadiums and infrastructure to tall buildings, keeps us agile,” McGee says.

He adds that Sisk aims to expand into the life sciences, data centre and healthcare sectors. “We’re the biggest healthcare [construction] provider in Ireland, with £600m worth of projects on site, and we’re looking to bring that expertise to the UK,” he says.

Sisk is already working on major healthcare projects in the UK. It has been involved at Great Ormond Street Hospital since 2017, most recently on a new paediatric cancer centre. And at Lewisham Hospital, Sisk broke ground in July on a new £14m surgical centre.

McGee highlights a “20-year track record” in Irish and European data centres, adding: “We’re currently targeting the UK for new projects in this space”.

Navigating difficulties

McGee is no stranger to adversity. He joined Sisk at a time of soaring inflation, rising material prices and climbing interest rates, plus global supply chain disruptions connected to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“Hyperinflation has normalised, but the cost of construction has increased significantly [compared to before 2022],” he says. “So those contractors like ourselves who were on fixed-price contracts have had to trade our way through them and get out the other end.”

This hasn’t been easy, as shown by Sisk’s latest accounts. While turnover rose 35 per cent to £475m in the 2023 calendar year, the firm’s pre-tax loss deepened from £2.6m to £9.7m.

McGee says that Sisk is “not at all bothered” about turnover. “It’s all about the bottom line. Our 2023 figures took into account two main factors. One was that some civils projects didn’t perform as expected due to hyperinflation. The other was post-Grenfell legacy issues. Like all in the industry, we’ve had past projects looked at by owners and insurers, and some queries have come up.

“There’s nothing overly worrying in any of them, but we’ve chosen to embrace the issues and be honourable to our clients. So we’ve gone back to a small number of projects to do some remediation, and we chose to address it in the 2023 accounts.”

Two remediation jobs are ongoing, one of them in London. “They’re small and modest – we’ve been lucky compared to other contractors. We’ve navigated difficult times before, and our experience helps us manage risks effectively,” McGee says. “But Sisk’s biggest concern in the UK is supply chain liquidity following years of market shock leading to and fuelling hyperinflation.”

Would more use of two-stage tenders aid contractors? “Yes and no – as an industry, two-stage tendering allows significant advantages in terms of early contractor involvement and supply-chain involvement, so efficiencies in design should become very apparent,” he says. “Where it potentially falls down slightly is that the first stage timelines can sometimes be so tight that they make it very challenging to fix an accurate target cost.”

There is still a place at Sisk for single-stage contracts “if they’re based on a good quality design as shovel-ready projects. It’s good to have some of those in your pipeline, but the trick is the quality of design, so you can get an accurate price.”

With his five years at ISG, McGee feels “very sad” about the collapse of his one-time employer. “From a human perspective, there’s more than 2,000 people made unemployed. One thing about ISG is that they had great people working for them. So I really feel for the people who’ve lost their jobs. But I also feel for the supply chain – I’ve no doubt that some of them will go through really challenging times.”

After ISG fell apart in September, McGee’s team reached out to offer support to affected employees and supply chain partners. “We’ve made an effort to help ISG employees find new opportunities, and we’ve also reached out to their supply chain partners to see if we can provide any assistance,” he says.

When he’s not steering Sisk’s UK and Irish business through the complexities of the construction industry, McGee follows the careers of his children, both of whom work in the built environment sector. His daughter Kate is a commercial manager at Mace in London and his son Jack is an assistant consultant in Arup’s climate & carbon team in Dublin.

He also enjoys walking near his Chilterns home and playing golf. The golf course “is a good place to get to know your supply chain and colleagues, because when you go around for four or five hours, you tend to chat them,” he says.

“But business deals don’t get done – maybe that’s in the past.”