Profile: Norman Haste

REMEMBER the early 1970s, when millions of people went to bed by candlelight?

Well according to Dr Norman Haste – the man dubbed the ‘Brunel of the 20th century’ – we could be heading for something more painful, as we count the cost of our failure to become self-reliant.

“We are close to a crisis in the energy sector that has the potential to be worse than the 1970s, when we suffered power cuts,” he said.

“Nuclear accounts for just 17 to 18 per cent of our energy output, we are having to import coal, and depend on Russia and Qatar for our gas. North Sea oil won’t make us self sufficient.”

Mr Haste was speaking on the day that Energy Secretary Ed Davey gave the go-ahead for the first of a planned new generation of nuclear power plants in the UK. The decision to grant planning permission for French energy giant EDF to build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C, in Somerset, will have cheered supporters of nuclear power, but for some people, it’s a case of too little, too late.

As the former project director for the Sizewell B nuclear power station, Mr Haste is well-placed to provide an informed view. During a 48-year career, he has been responsible for some of Britain’s biggest infrastructure projects.

Back in the 1970s, he worked as a section manager during the building work on the Humber Bridge. Mr Haste has been project director for the Severn Crossing; Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5. He also found time for a stint as chief executive of the CrossRail trans-London rail project.

Now, he’s gone back to his roots to become the first non-executive director at the engineering firm Spencer Group, which is developing Energy Works, a £100m-plus environmentally friendly power plant in Hull. Born in Cleethorpes, his early working years were overshadowed by the loss of his parents, who died shortly after he turned 16.

“It meant that I had to make decisions for myself,” he said. “I went to live with my aunt in Scunthorpe, who came from an engineering family, and that crystallised my thinking about what I wanted to do.”

He became an apprentice at the Scunthorpe steelworks, which employed 28,000 people at the time. Keen to progress, Mr Haste attended night school and went on to take a civil engineering degree at Salford University. He rapidly rose through the ranks at John Laing, and, at the age of 27, he found himself taking responsibility for a section of the Humber Bridge.

Mr Haste said: “I was responsible for the construction of the tower and main cable anchorage on the Hessle side of the river. It taught me to value the contribution of every member of the team. I have mixed feelings about the Humber Bridge.

“The 1970s was a bad time for industrial relations. The bridge was supposed to have been completed in four years, but it actually took eight. It was not a great advertisement for UK engineering, although the end result was magnificent.”

A stickler for safety with a strong attention to detail, Mr Haste also ensured that another giant bridge, the Severn Crossing, was finished on time and on budget in 1996.

He recalled: “I remember at the start of the project being told that, in all probability, four people would be killed on the Severn project. My response was, ‘Over my dead body.’ Nobody died.”

He believes we could still learn a lot from Thomas Andrew, the contractor who built the Severn rail tunnel 127 years ago.

Mr Haste said: “I’m also an admirer of Washington Roebling, who oversaw the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. A lot of the work done by him helped to inspire the Severn Crossing and the Humber Bridge.”

In his late 30s, Mr Haste worked for a New Zealand company in Singapore, which took him into sensitive diplomatic territory. He carried out a project to blast a channel through an atoll in the South China Sea. Mr Haste added: “It was a very hush hush project in the Spratly Islands, which were at the centre of a lot of political nonsense. The Japanese and Malaysians were laying claim to them because they wanted the mineral rights. The Malaysians put a fort on them inside an atoll. It was a technically very challenging job.”

By 1985, he had returned to the UK, where Laing asked him to run its bid for Sizewell B. “I needed to get the local community to accept it as their project,’’ he said. “The local council and Government minister (Environment Minister John Gummer) were very supportive, and the local community was desperate for jobs. But you can’t just trade on that and ride roughshod over people.”

From 1996 to 2002, his work on Terminal 5 swept him into the political arena. He had the gruelling task of steering the £4.3bn project through a planning inquiry.

“For Terminal 5, I spent nine months preparing evidence for the public inquiry and five days on the witness stand,” he said. “CrossRail took me into the world of politics, which I’d never been in before. It made me realise there is more to the delivery of major projects than steel and concrete.”

From, 2006 to 2009, he was Laing O’Rourke’s chief operating officer for the Middle East and South East Asia, where he carried responsibility for several projects including a $20bn development in Abu Dhabi.

“I had been working as a consultant in Dubai and realised I wasn’t cut out for it,’’ said Mr Haste. “I was approached by Laing O’Rourke and given the chance to work in the Middle East – it was fascinating, the Middle East was booming at the time, and all of it was with borrowed money. I was involved in building a whole new town from scratch on what had been just sand. I thought this bubble had to burst, and sure enough it did.”

In recent years, Mr Haste has been working on Laing’s interests in the “new nuclear” field. So why has he accepted a senior strategic role at the Spencer Group? Well, Mr Haste, who lives in Bawtry, South Yorkshire, has been a client of the company for a decade, and he has a strong affinity with Charlie Spencer, the company’s founder and CEO, who is also a former apprentice.

Mr Haste says his role is about “guidance, advice and governance” and he’s clearly excited about the Energy Works scheme. The plans for the energy-from-waste plant took a major step forward this month, with the promise of £20m from the European Regional Development Fund.

Spencer Group is in discussions with the Government’s Green Investment Bank over potential funding. Energy Works would use a mixture of technologies including composting, anaerobic digestion and burning to turn waste into enough power for 25,000 homes.

Mr Haste said: “It’s an efficient green energy system for Hull, which will have a minimal impact on the environment.” He’s determined to ensure the lights never go out on Hull’s innovators.

Norman Haste Factfile

Name: Norman David Haste

Title: Non-executive director the Spencer Group, the Hull-based engineering and construction company. It is behind Energy Works, which will use composting, anaerobic digestion and burning to turn waste into enough power for 25,000 homes.

Education: North Lindsey Technical College in Scunthorpe, Salford University

First job: Apprentice at the steelworks in Scunthorpe

Last book read: SAS Storm Siege – The account of the forgotten war in Oman in 1973

Car driven: Jaguar

Favourite holiday destination: South Africa

Favourite piece of music: Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue