Kingsfield Academy has provided support to the international engineering and construction industry for over 40 years. After starting life as a traditional claims company and decades of supporting our clients through consulting, the support of learning and continuous improvement in all its forms is now the centre of our services. Our primary focus is project-critical training, leadership development and coaching to support the profitable and capital-efficient delivery of projects.
Our story
Kingsfield was founded in 1982, initially as a claims & contract management company working with clients on major projects across different industry sectors. We have always operated globally and internationally and in later years gained specialised expertise in energy – oil and gas, power and renewables.
One of Kingsfield’s founders, John Fotherby, remains an energetic key player in the business. Over the decades we have built our expertise in the areas that are critical to project outcomes – the management of contract, commercial, scope, change, claims and time and disputes together with the no less crucial management of people, teams and stakeholders. Working closely with – and for periods embedded in – our client teams, we have helped improve project results to the tune of 100s of millions. For our owners and investor customers, this has translated into enhanced capital efficiency on their CAPEX projects. In contrast, for our contractor clients, our involvement has resulted in restoring or increasing project margins and profitability.
Our support for clients has taken different forms, from consulting, coaching to hands-on management in helping resolve ‘messy’ commercial and contractual problems on projects, always pragmatically and taking stakeholder relationships into account.
Kingsfield Academy is launched
In 2003 long-standing director Gabriele Burian started a new training and development business stream in the form of Kingsfield Academy to help clients take preventative steps and tackle repeated mistakes on future projects. The Academy’s learning and development solutions demonstrated that the return on investment of a training intervention is quickly recouped when project teams understand where and how to leverage their newly found commercial understanding.
Another key player, Karen Cherrill, joined the team, who following a corporate career in a major US/UK EPC Contractor brought valuable additional expertise in pre-contract and risk management and a keen interest in project collaboration, one of our service categories she leads today.
Growing the Team
Three current colleagues joined us in 2014-2015: The growth of Kingsfield Academy gathered pace when Carl Haynes joined the team and spear-headed us becoming an Approved Training Provider with the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) in the UK. Since joining, Wayne Edmonds has hugely improved our collective digital capabilities, stretching from communication, virtual training solutions to marketing & promotion. Caroline Cackett is covering our contracting, the supply chain, business administration and generally applying her multiple talents where needed. Last but not least, Sylvia Levick, as our trusted Accountant and Company Secretary, keeping our finances in check. In addition, we draw on a diverse group of selected and trusted industry subject matter experts and trainers when needed.
At the end of 2018, Kingsfield’s evolution continued by refocusing on training and coaching while scaling back its consulting services. This considerably boosted our portfolio and delivery capability.
Becoming Partners
In 2020 we have evolved into a team of equal business partners who own the company and share the same values about quality of delivery, integrity, tenacity, continuous improvement, pragmatic solutions and going the extra mile for our clients.