Kier is judging its Oxford programme by what leaders take back

A few days with faculty has a familiar shape. People leave the building, sit with a case and come back able to repeat the language of the week. The job they left is still staffed the same way. Nobody has written down which decision is now supposed to be made differently, or who on the job is supposed to make it.

Kier is putting 50 of its leaders through a programme with Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. It is called the AI Strategy and Leadership Journey: a three-day residential at Oxford's new Global Leadership Centre, then online working group sessions. The company places the week inside Naturally Digital, so that people apply technology in project delivery, including improved productivity and new ways of working.

What has to outlast the residential already has a name. After the in-person sessions, those leaders keep working with Oxford in cross-business Growth Groups, to develop opportunities for application across Kier. An opportunity that crosses the businesses has to be something a project can run. If the groups meet only to recall the residential, the design has folded back into the language of the week.

Stuart Togwell, chief executive of Kier, sets the standard without dressing it up. Becoming Naturally Digital, he says, means always having humans at the helm, and the leadership investment is there to equip them to make informed, responsible and safe decisions. He connects the work with the school to safety, to working more efficiently and to greater value for customers and communities. Then he names the score. "The real measure of success will be how we apply this learning across Kier." Leaders, on his account, will now take these insights back, share them with colleagues and identify practical opportunities.

Andrew Stephen, academic director of the programme and a professor at Oxford, describes the same handoff. He says it is impressive to see the leaders embrace the opportunity with openness and enthusiasm, and he frames the work as turning AI's potential into practical and responsible applications across the business. He adds that the benefits could extend beyond the business to the communities and economy Kier serves, given its role in national infrastructure.

Kier is specific about the shape and quiet about the content. It does not list the sessions, name a tool the leaders used or point to a project they have already changed. It does say the group has introduced new digital tools and agents into its ways of working, including in health and safety. A week that never meets those tools is a second activity beside the operation. A week that decides where a person still makes the safety call is the programme Togwell is describing.

Fifty is a small room next to that work. It helps if those fifty can change a method and show a colleague how. Kier says they will share what they learned. It does not say which colleagues, which job or what that colleague is supposed to do differently on the next shift. Sharing is not yet a redesigned role.

1. Judge the programme by the opportunity a Growth Group can name. Fifty leaders do the residential, then keep working with Oxford across the businesses.

2. Keep humans at the helm as a rule someone can apply. Togwell ties the learning to informed, responsible and safe decisions, and the group has already put tools and agents into the work, including health and safety.

3. Do not promote enthusiasm into a result. Stephen's observation is that the leaders embraced the opportunity with openness. The sentence beside it is about practical and responsible applications. Only the second one can be checked on a project.

4. Ask who the learning is shared with. Kier says leaders will take the insights back and share them with colleagues. It does not name the colleague, the job or the decision. Until it does, the measure Togwell set has not been met.

An AI training session is a practical place to take one decision a project team already makes, name the leader who has to bring a changed method back, and write down what a colleague will do differently the following week.

Sources:

• Kier Group, 2 November 2026