What happened

Briggs & Forrester has named Duncan Benedetti as its next group chief executive, Construction News reported this week. He takes over from Paul Burton on 1 January 2027, with Burton stepping back to the chairman's role he will now combine with the title. Benedetti has spent close to two decades at the M&E contractor and currently runs its Living division, the arm that covers residential and build-to-rent mechanical and electrical work. He will keep a seat on the group board through the handover. Matthew Orme, currently operations director for Living, moves up to run that division once Benedetti steps across.

Burton took the chief executive job in 2017 and added the chairman's title in 2021, when Mike Stanton retired and the business converted to employee ownership. That ownership structure matters here: in an employee trust, a succession like this is as much about who the staff and trustees trust to carry the culture forward as it is about who impresses a plc board, and promoting from inside sends a clear signal on that front.

Why it matters

M&E contracting has had a harder run of leadership turnover than the main contracting side of the market, mostly because order books are so exposed to the data centre, life sciences and residential retrofit boom and the skills to deliver it are thin on the ground. Briggs & Forrester choosing continuity, an internal promotion with eighteen months of planning rather than an external hire, says the board rates stability over a fresh face right now. The firm is heading into its 80th year with Living, the division Benedetti built, doing enough of the heavy lifting that running it was the natural route to the top job.

What it means for careers and hiring

For anyone in M&E project management, commissioning or building services design, this is a useful read on where the demand sits inside a firm like Briggs & Forrester: residential and build-to-rent M&E has grown enough to produce a chief executive, and Orme's promotion into Living shows the bench underneath it is being developed, not bought in. If you are a senior engineer or commercial manager inside a residential M&E business and wondering whether there is a path upward without leaving, this is the kind of case to point to.

It is also a reminder for anyone weighing an employee-owned contractor against a plc. EOT firms tend to promote from within for the top job far more consistently than listed companies, where private equity or shareholder pressure often pulls in an outside appointment. If long-term progression within one business matters more to you than the fastest possible jump in title, Briggs & Forrester's succession is the kind of track record worth asking about at interview.