Andrew Wolstenholme – Director of Innovation and Strategic Capability, Balfour Beatty

Andrew graduated from Southampton University in 1981 with a 1st class honours degree in Civil Engineering. He served in the British Army for 5 years, first in the Royal Engineers and later as an Irish Hussar.

He resigned his commission in 1985 to pursue a career in engineering and joined Arup, the international engineering consultants, as a bridge designer. He was later seconded to Schal Associates in Chicago where he worked on tall buildings along side some of the great American architects. He moved to Hong Kong in 1992 to develop Arup’s project management capability on some of the major infrastructure projects in South East Asia at that time, including Hong Kong’s new airport at Chek Lap Kok and the Western Harbour Tunnel Crossing.

Andrew joined BAA plc in 1997 as Construction Director on the Heathrow Express rail link. He went on to lead, as Programme Director, the delivery of Heathrow’s £4.3bn Terminal 5 and later became BAA’s Director of Capital projects for their £10bn investment programme across 7 UK airports.

After 11 years of being a client Andrew joined Balfour Beatty in 2009 as MD of Balfour Beatty’s professional services group BB Management and following the acquisition of Parsons Brinckerhoff, the US based consultancy in 2010, he became Integration Director. Today Andrew is Group Director of Innovation and Strategic Capability.

With an ongoing passion to improve the UK construction industry Andrew has recently chaired an industry review of progress since the launch of the Egan report, ‘Rethinking Construction’, in 1998. This new perspective – ‘Never Waste a Good Crisis’ – focuses on the key issues that face the industry over the next 10 years.

Andrew was awarded an OBE for services to the construction industry in June 2009.