Kier Group

Kier Group plc is a construction, services and property group active in building and civil engineering, support services, public and private housebuilding, land development and the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). It is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

It is the fourth-largest UK construction contractor behind Balfour Beatty, Carillion and Laing O'Rourke.

History

The Company was founded by Jorgen Lotz and Olaf Kier, Danish engineers, under the name Lotz & Kier in 1928, and it was based in Stoke-on-Trent.

A few years later Lotz withdrew from the company, but Olaf Kier retained a semblance of his identity by including Lotz's initials in the organisation's new name, 'J.L. Kier & Co Ltd', which remained the company's principal title for over four decades. By the late 1930s Kier had moved their head office to Belgravia in Westminster, and thereby became neighbours to many of Britain's leading construction engineering consultants and contractors, who had formed a substantial coterie in Westminster for professionals and businessmen engaged in civil engineering. Their immediate neighbours were Marples Ridgeway (builders of Hammersmith Flyover) and Edmund Nuttall (builders of both Mersey road tunnels).