page_title: Kier Group
section_title: Concrete engineering
hierarchical_section_title: Kier Group / History / Pre-World War II / Concrete engineering
caption_attribution_description: English: Highpoint 1 apartments, with balconies in profile, Highgate, London. Modernist movement design: Berthold Lubetkin; engneering: Ove Arup; built in 1935.
context_page_description: Kier Group plc is a UK construction, services and property group active in building and civil engineering, support services, public and private housebuilding, land development and the Private Finance Initiative.
  Founded in 1928 in Stoke-on-Trent it initially specialised in concrete engineering before expanding into general contracting and house-building. Kier was listed as a public company on the London Stock Exchange from 1963 until it was acquired by Beazer in 1986. After a period under the ownership of Hanson plc, it was bought out by its management in 1992, expanded its housing interests, and was relisted on the London Stock Exchange in 1996. During the early 21st century, it expanded through acquisitions, and in September 2018 Kier was ranked, by turnover, as the second biggest UK construction contractor, behind Balfour Beatty. It was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index until its share price plunged following a failed rights issue in late 2018, after which it started a restructuring, cost-cutting and disposals programme.
context_section_description: During its first 35 years, Kier became identified with certain civil engineering specialisms, such as contiguous cylindrical reinforced concrete grain silos and cement silos, using continuously sliding formwork; commencing with those at Barking in 1929, followed by grain silos at Northampton, Peterborough, Melksham, Gloucester and Witham; and cement silos at Norwich, Cambridge, Trinidad, and in India.
  Such specialist work was part of a pattern that quickly developed in the company's operations during that period, namely the undertaking of innovative, state-of-the-art civil engineering techniques at the forefront of modern technology. Other elements within this pattern were hyperbolic natural draft cooling towers (mostly around 300 ft high), monolithic concrete chimneys (sometimes over 400 ft high), complete power station structures, and coastal works such as tanker berths, docks and harbours.
  In the same period, only this time in the building sector, Kier were in the vanguard of new reinforced concrete systems for use as framework for tall buildings.  Their most famous contribution in this field was an eight-storey avant-garde development of apartment blocks named Highpoint, located in Highgate Village, north London. They were responsible for the reinforced concrete and general building.
  When this project was completed in 1935 it became widely renowned as the finest example of this form of construction for residential purposes. When Le Corbusier himself visited Highpoint in 1935 he said, "This beautiful building .... at Highgate is an achievement of the first rank." And American critic Henry Russell Hitchcock called it, "One of the finest, if not absolutely the finest, middle-class housing projects in the world" (in 1970 both Highpoint blocks were classified Grade I listed buildings).
caption: Corner detail of Highpoint I, showing balcony profiles.
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