Fri 28 Mar 2008
... with Alan Brown
Building up Cala's operations in England is the job of one man - Alan Brown. Michael Dineen reports.
Alan Brown, now chairman of all Cala's domestic operations in England, knew at the age of twelve that he wanted to be a surveyor.Curious to know what a boy that young was able to see in this career, I asked about the attraction.
"The father of a friend was a chartered surveyor and I found out that he spent half his working time in the office and the other half outside, and I thought that's the kind of job I want."
Seemingly he never wavered from this and when he went for his first job - with Ideal Homes - five or six years later he insisted as a condition of employment that they allow him time to study surveying.
"It was very unusual to find a surveyor on the payroll of a house builder in those days. Ideal let me off one day a week and I put in an evening a week at the East Croydon Tech. I finished with ARICS after my name, and I've never regretted it."
This kind of certainty - focus, as we say these days - took him to the chief surveyor's post at Willett Homes, an acquisition of Ideal Homes, at 26.
It was however around this time that he began to feel slightly bored with the job, needing a change, so in the mysterious way of the house building trade network Brown got wind of an appropriate vacancy elsewhere.
Fortunately the recruitment executive who interviewed him was a man of nice perception: "you'll get this job alright, but it's the same as the one you already have...I've got a better idea..."
That very day the head hunter had been instructed to find a development manager - a job that involved almost everything in house building, barring land buying and sales.
"It represented an easy transfer from surveying to construction - which, by this time is what I really wanted," he told me in his Coventry Road, Birmingham office recently.
The company who gave him his chance of a new career move? Cala. "That's twenty-one years ago, and I've been with them ever since. I still think it's a fantastic place to work!"
This unaffected enthusiasm for the spirit in Cala has nothing at all to do with Mandy Rice Davies's famous dictum: "Well, he would say that wouldn't he?"!
After all he is now top man in England, so who does he have to impress?
Well, there's head quarters in Edinburgh, but they seem to be giving him his head.
"As chairman I have to be a policemen - but only a little policeman. Today I keep up morale by saying the situation is tough in the industry, but not nearly as tough as 1991 - and certainly not as tough as people were saying it was before Christmas."
For the most part he can be sure that Cala people are there because they are good at their jobs and need only a little guidance . The company philosophy is to allow the three English divisions he heads the freedom to run their own show.
"I'd hate it if I heard people saying, oh that's a Cala site because we build to suit the location"
Cala's Yorkshire, Midlands and South East divisions may be autonomous, but they do not escape Brown's attentions for long: "I spend a couple of days a fortnight with each of them, but I understand the regional managing directors don't want me hanging around, so I spend half a day with them and then I get on with project work, talking to the construction people, looking at strategic issues, making high level contact with agents and commercial developers, looking at possible joint ventures..."
He has his own offices in each region, and a lot of his working life is spent on the hoof visiting them. It's all much as he thought he'd like life to be as a twelve year old schoolboy!
But it was not always so settled, for back in 1988 when things in the house building industry went pear-shaped - he had only recently joined Cala - he had to survive a relentless series of retrenchments as regional offices closed - leaving very few executives to carry on.
"Sue and I were about the only two left. She was sales and I was construction and we were dealing with sites from Cambridge to Somerset. At one time there were thirty Cala developments in our area, all of which we ran from a new office in Basingstoke. It was hectic."
Sue is his wife of ten years, Sue Parry, still sales director, but Cala now have a payroll of 150 in the three English divisions. They now live, with adult children from previous marriages close enough to be neighbourly, near Stratford upon Avon.
Brown's first taste of managing directorial power came in 1994 when head office in Edinburgh asked him to open up Cala's Birmingham office. He was just 33.
Today Cala's operations south of the border account for a sizeable contribution to group earnings. Of the three regional offices in England Alan Brown says: "My job is to coax, without too much of a hand on the tiller; our business works best if they are allowed to be autonomous, but still I hope each of our regions will be up to £100 million annual turnover in the next three years - and we're on track to do this."
Sensibly, it now seems, Cala withdrew from the crowded inner city apartment market a few years ago and now rely hardly at all on investor clientele. Too risky and volatile, he says.
Cala content themselves with building homes for buyers to live in - with, he insists, a strong emphasis on design ands quality: "I'd hate it if I heard people saying, oh that's a Cala site because we build to suit the location," he told me firmly.
Cala, he says are "massive" in Scotland, but only comparatively small in England. Scottish Cala's housing turnover is about £200 million for a population of around four million.
Compare this with Alan Brown's three English divisions, with populations of five million in each and turnover figures approaching £100 million each, and you can see he still has some way to go to meet the brief of his Edinburgh masters: "Alan, please go and make Cala as big in England as they are in Scotland."
He has been Chairman of the Yorkshire division for just three years. Last July they made him chairman of the rest of Cala's south-of-the-border operations. It's clear they mean business. They have the money - and at 47 Alan Brown has the time.
First published in Show House Magazine March 2008.
The greatest care has been taken to ensure accuracy but some information contained within this article may have changed since it was first published.
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