Last updated 13:39, Thursday, 06 March 2008

The man who was one of the last personal links with the construction company which helped change the face of Britain, Sir Maurice Laing, has died aged 90.

Close to home: Sir Maurice Laing knocking in the foundation stone at Newspaper House, Dalston Road, Carlisle, home of Cumbrian Newspapers, in 1971 with the late Sir John Burgess, second from right, managing director of the newspaper group

The younger son of John Laing, the Carlisle founder of what became a national and international company, he was born in the city in 1918, to a strongly evangelical Christian family.

Like his brother, who became Sir Kirby Laing, he was always destined to join the family firm and from an early age was a regular visitor to the building sites.

However, the Carlisle company was expanding rapidly and in 1926 moved its headquarters to Mill Hill, in London.

Young Maurice was educated at St Lawrence’s College in Ramsgate until he was 17 when he became a trainee with the family firm.

Although his eyesight was not good, he managed to join the wartime RAF after a furious row with his father. His work in a major construction company meant that he was in a reserved occupation and not required for military service – but he was having none of this.

He threw out his spectacles and joined up, only for his father to ‘lean’ on the Air Ministry to have him discharged. The row that erupted was, by all accounts, monumental and it ended only when Maurice told government ministers that he would go to gaol if he was not allowed to fight.

And so he returned to the RAF and basic training, where he found more trouble after he hit a sergeant. He also had to convince the opticians that he could see well to pass his flying fitness test when he actually suffered from mild double vision and somehow this he did.

When he eventually won his wings as a pilot in South Africa, World War Two was coming to an end and he then rejoined the family firm and its civil engineering work.

The John Laing company was by then one of the Government’s favoured contractors. It had built a vast number of private houses around London in the pre-war years, as well as 10 new aerodromes for the RAF and several stations for barrage balloons, and during the war it played a major part in building 500 airfields right across the nation.

Out of uniform and with relations with his father restored, he played a significant part in helping re-build parts of Britain – particularly housing – and after 1953, when John Laing and Sons became a public company, he was made chief executive of the building and construction side of the Laing Group’s business, at the age of 35.

Then came a huge challenge when the company’s £16.5 million bid to build 52 miles of the M1 motorway from Luton to Rugby was accepted. The contract was completed on time and on price.

A clever man, Maurice Laing was expert in management techniques and in economics generally and he was always interested in projects abroad. All of this saw him become a Bank of England director in 1963. He had by then visited many countries in the Middle East and Africa and was appointed a member of the Board of Trade Advisory Council on Overseas Construction and of the Export Group for Constructional Industries. He served as chairman of the Export Group for two years and was later appointed its president.

He also served on the National Economic Development Council and on the Minister of Works’ National Consultative Council.

His other important posts included chairmanship of the British Employers’ Federation and of the Confederation of British Industry.

For years he had served as number two in the family business but then, in 1976, he and his brother agreed to change places and he became chairman of the Laing Group. He served in this capacity until 1982 when he became life president.

Knighted in 1965, Sir John Maurice Laing leaves his wife of 67 years and their son.

A private funeral was arranged and a memorial service will follow.