Sir Robert McAlpine’s head of infrastructure Tony Gates has left the business with the firm bringing in a senior figure from Lendlease into its commercial arm as part of the changes.

Gates’ departure was announced internally last week and brings to an end seven years at the company.

Source: Sir Robert McAlpine

Tony Gates

At the same time, McAlpine has brought in Peter Leonard from Lendlease’s developments arm as its new executive commercial director.

Leonard, who was at Lendlease for eight years, was previously its executive general manager for commercial and central operations at its construction division before switching to the developments business in 2021, later becoming head of development.

Gates has been replaced by Steve Hudson.

In a statement, McAlpine said: “We confirm that Tony Gates has left Sir Robert McAlpine and intends to spend more time with his family and pursue new opportunities. We thank him for his outstanding contribution to the business over the past seven years and wish him well for his future endeavours. 

“Steve Hudson has moved into the Infrastructure Executive Managing Director role, bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience from both Infrastructure and the public sector. We are thrilled to welcome Peter Leonard, who joins SRM as executive commercial director.”

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Gates was in charge of McAlpine’s work on HS2 for the Align joint venture.

Align, which also includes Bouygues and Volker Fitzpatrick, is carrying out tunnelling work in the Chilterns.

He joined McAlpine from Balfour Beatty in 2017 where he spent five years and before that worked at Carillion for 13 years.

Hudson has been at McAlpine for four years and also spent four years at HS2 before leaving in August 2019 to set up his own consulting business.