Togwell reorganises his leadership team: delivery and risk signals for project engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Kier Group’s new chief executive Stuart Togwell has restructured the business from five divisions to three, creating a single Kier Infrastructure unit by merging Transportation with Natural Resources and Nuclear & Networks, and appointing current chief people officer Louisa Finlay as chief operating officer with added responsibility for digital technology. Former Laing O’Rourke leader Martin Staehr becomes group managing director for Kier Construction, while James Askew moves from interim construction lead to group commercial director overseeing procurement, pre-construction and business development. Tom Hinton joins as chief financial officer and Abi Cooke becomes chief of staff, ahead of a trading update on 20 January and interim results on 3 March.
Technical Brief
- Executive committee retains Leigh Thomas (Kier Property) and Sophie Timms (corporate affairs), preserving development and stakeholder continuity.
- Chief of staff role created for the CEO, centralising strategy coordination and cross-division decision support.
- Chief of staff post filled by Abi Cooke, previously head of strategy for Kier Places, bringing FM/estates insight.
- Infrastructure division consolidation is framed as creating a “market-facing infrastructure powerhouse” for client interface and bidding.
- Executive team explicitly described as “shaped and ready for 2026”, implying a multi‑year pipeline and orderbook planning horizon.
- Trading update fixed for 20 January and interim results for 3 March, giving contractors and supply chain near‑term visibility on Kier’s workload and risk appetite.
Our Take
Kier’s move from five to three divisions comes just days after it secured the £120m Darlington Economic Campus hub, suggesting the streamlined structure is being put in place while the UK public-sector workload is clearly strengthening.
Recent Kier wins in AMP8 water frameworks and the Darlington government hub in the United Kingdom indicate that any consolidation of Kier Infrastructure and Kier Construction is likely aimed at delivering large, multi-asset public programmes more coherently rather than chasing new geographies.
Within our 345 Infrastructure stories, Kier appears frequently alongside other UK tier-one contractors like Costain and Laing O’Rourke, and the latest leadership reshuffle signals that boardroom agility is becoming a competitive factor in bidding for complex government-backed projects to 2026.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
Related Articles
Related Industries & Products
Construction
Quality control software for construction companies with material testing, batch tracking, and compliance management.
Mining
Geotechnical software solutions for mining operations including CMRR analysis, hydrogeological testing, and data management.
QCDB-io
Comprehensive quality control database for manufacturing, tunnelling, and civil construction with UCS testing, PSD analysis, and grout mix design management.


