What happened

Construction Enquirer reported this week that work has restarted at 100 Kensington, the 462-home, £500m GDV tower on West Cromwell Road in west London, two months after main contractor Ardmore Group collapsed into administration in June. The job had stalled at roughly 30% complete.

Rather than re-tender to another main contractor, developer SevenCapital has turned to its own group company, Seven Capital (Woodrow) Ltd, set up back in 2016, and put it in as main contractor. The job is being run by SevenCapital chief operating officer James Moody alongside a construction director and site team. Around 500 workers are expected to be back on site by the autumn, with the 29-storey tower due to top out in October 2026, phased completions through the final quarter of 2027, and full completion targeted for early 2028.

Why it matters

Ardmore's collapse was one of a run of contractor failures this year, and 100 Kensington was one of its highest-profile live jobs. What is notable here is the recovery route. Rather than absorb months of delay while a new main contractor mobilises through a fresh procurement process, SevenCapital has stood up its own delivery capability and gone straight back to site. That is a different model from the usual developer-appoints-contractor relationship, and it points to a wider shift: more developers building direct delivery capacity so a single contractor failure cannot stall a scheme for a year or more.

It also puts the supply chain in an unusual position. Subcontractors who were owed money or left in limbo when Ardmore went down are now being re-engaged, but by a client-side team rather than a traditional main contractor, with everything that implies for payment terms, contract structures and reporting lines.

What it means for careers and hiring

This is a live example of a developer building a construction function from scratch, fast. SevenCapital needs project managers, a construction director, site managers and commercial staff on its own payroll rather than routed through a main contractor, which is a genuinely different career path from the usual contractor-side route: closer to the money, closer to the client, and increasingly common as developers hedge against contractor failure.

For quantity surveyors and commercial managers, the re-procurement of subcontractors on a live, part-built scheme is a specific and marketable skill: you are pricing and re-engaging trades against an existing programme and an existing (unfinished) building, not a clean sheet. For site-based trades, M&E and superstructure teams who were stood down when Ardmore folded, the recovery job is now hiring directly rather than through the old contractor's books.

More broadly, if you were on Ardmore's payroll or its supply chain when it collapsed, 100 Kensington is worth a call. Client-side construction arms like Woodrow do not have the same bench strength as an established main contractor, and they are often willing to move fast on people they already know from the job.