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A consolidated view of Nutral and Workforce Assured's engagement with Kier across contingent labour, supply chain audit, and compliance — plus the replication opportunity modelled on our Balfour Beatty programme.
Headline numbers across the Kier engagement to date — spanning payslip audit, supplier accreditation, and the supply chain composition pilot.
Our three active relationship owners inside Kier. Expansion into Construction / Hays will need an additional sponsor sourced through Gerard.
Five distinct pieces of work have shaped the relationship. Click through each tab for the detail, scope, and outcome.
Invited pitch alongside a shortlist of MSP providers. Our response positioned the Nutral model — single source-to-pay platform, independent from agency ownership, combining VMS, accreditation audit, and the Workforce Assured standard.
The addressable population at the time was 903 workers across Transportation (352) and NRNN (551), with only 188 per month actually sourced through the existing model — leaving significant leakage outside managed supply. Our proposal was scoped against both divisions with a phased 12-week implementation timeline.
NRNN was the primary operational focus following the pitch. Construction (the Hays-managed contingent labour book) remains an active opportunity for replication — see the Next Steps section for routes in.
Each of Kier's London logistics subcontractors was audited at head-office level against the Workforce Assured accreditation standard between August and October 2025, with reassessments running from November 2025 through March 2026. The audit covers policies, processes and governance across temporary labour: ethical labour, tax compliance, supply chain transparency and onboarding controls.
The management systems audit stream sits alongside the Kier-specific payslip audit stream — together they give Kier both a policy-level and a worker-level view of supplier compliance. Intermediary structures (Stonebridge, Rosewood Tradesman, Bishopsgate, Fairmead, NASA, Pendulum, Navigate Contracting, Ardent Tide, Omnia) and connected-party ownership concerns were identified here before being evidenced in the payslip audit.
With Joint & Several Liability live from April 2026, the accreditation layer is the mechanism by which Kier documents its reasonable-prevention procedures for Corporate Criminal Offence and the new CIS fraud regime. It is the foundation the payslip audit sits on top of.
Site worker interviews were conducted in-person on Kier logistics deployments to triangulate what the payslips and accreditation audits were telling us about the Tier-2 intermediary supply chain.
The interview programme gave visibility on pay practices as experienced by workers themselves — umbrella margins, admin fees, pay type (CIS vs PAYE), onboarding route and supervision. These findings directly informed the framing of the October–November 2025 payslip audit and the risk narrative that followed.
This is the evidence base that turns a compliance programme into a genuine modern slavery, CCO and worker-welfare control — the layer that regulators and investors increasingly expect to see.
The composition pilot gives Kier the first real view of its sub-contract workforce as a whole — not just directly engaged contingent labour, but the downstream workforce delivering sub-contract packages.
Composition data covers engagement model (PAYE, CIS, PSC, umbrella), role/skill mix, intermediary supply chain, and geographic distribution. The pilot is proving the methodology before Kier rolls it out as a standard contractual requirement across packages.
The composition pilot is the dataset that unlocks a much bigger conversation — with Stuart Mulvaney on tax exposure, with Gerard Cox on procurement design, and with Richard Grey on operational delivery. It's the evidentiary spine of the expansion play.
Kier engaged Workforce Assured to audit payment practices across its five London logistics subcontractors. Payslips, job roles, and HMRC submissions (RTI, CIS, Onshore Intermediaries) were cross-referenced to validate the data and assess CIS suitability.
The audit landed against a sharpening legislative backdrop: Joint & Several Liability for unpaid tax (April 2026), the CIS fraud regime (April 2026) with five-year loss of gross status, and heightened HMRC activity on Corporate Criminal Offence in construction.
84% CIS usage in a predominantly low-skilled logistics workforce, combined with 40% of CIS workers paid at rates incompatible with genuine self-employment, creates a compound CCO and CIS-fraud exposure that sits with the contracting chain — including Kier.
Two sequential audit streams across the five London logistics subcontractors. Management systems audit at head-office level (Aug–Oct 2025, reassessments Nov 2025–Mar 2026), followed by a Kier-specific payslip audit (Oct–Nov 2025). Together they deliver a policy-level and a worker-level view of supplier compliance.
| Supplier | Mgmt audit | Audit date / Reassessment | Crit | Major | Minor | Obs | LLW breaches | Key risk theme |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alandale Logistics Ltd. | Fail | Sep 25 / Mar 26 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 11 | Connected intermediary; below-min pay; CIS fraud risk |
| O'Neill & Brennan Site Services | Fail | Oct 25 / Jan 26 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | Hybrid model; £5 deduction; entity structure |
| Madigan Gill Logistics Ltd. | Referred | Sep 25 / TBA | 0 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 1 | HMRC payroll insolvency; CIS misclassification |
| Munnelly Support Services Ltd. | Referred | Aug 25 / TBA | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Connected intermediary (Bishopsgate); welfare CIS |
| Avondale Construction Ltd. | Pass | Sep 25 / Nov 25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | All conformances resolved; Fairmead margin concern |
Where the November 2024 pitch landed, what's live today, and the divisions still open for a replication of the Sisk / Balfour Beatty model.
Invited pitch to provide neutral vendor management across Kier Transportation (Highways, Rail, Aviation, D&E) and Natural Resources, Nuclear & Networks (Water, Energy, Nuclear, Environment).
Our submission led on commercial neutrality, single-platform source-to-pay, and the Workforce Assured standard as the compliance layer. Sisk was the featured case study.
The ITT and our submission are archived — a strong foundation to carry forward for the divisions that remain open.
Data from the November 2024 ITT pack. A small share was already running through a sourcing model; the majority was outside, representing the leakage and compliance gap the neutral vend model was designed to close.
Primary operational engagement coming out of the pitch. Water, Energy, Nuclear, Environment — the division we are delivering against.
Blue-collar labour across Kier Construction currently runs through Hays. This is the division we want to replicate what's been done at Balfour Beatty. Gerard Cox is the route in.
Sub-contractor payslip audit, accreditation, composition pilot. Toehold into Construction; expansion case already evidenced.
The blueprint we've built across Balfour Beatty UKCS, TEPMP, and BBV is the natural model to replicate inside Kier Construction. The asset list, the evidence, and the commercial shape are all already in place.
Across Balfour Beatty's UK Construction Services, TEPMP, and the BBV joint venture, Nutral has built, operated and iterated the exact neutral-vendor MSP model Kier's Construction division needs — with full workforce analytics, WTR compliance, overtime deep dives, and April 2026 JSL-ready contract architecture.
A fully operational neutral-vendor MSP across the Tier-1 UKCS, TEPMP and BBV divisions, with a consolidated supplier base, harmonised rate cards, and a live payslip audit capability operating against 17,630+ rate cards.
The legislative and operational environment is identical. Kier Construction carries the same CIS, CCO and JSL exposure we've already designed around at Balfour Beatty — and the audit findings from the London logistics programme are the exact trigger that drove BB's contract redesign.
Kier Construction — currently managed via Hays — is the direct equivalent. The pitch-to-programme journey we ran at BB, and before that at Sisk, is the template: two-stage tender, harmonised commercial, VMS-led MSP, and Workforce Assured as the standard.
Three concrete moves to turn the Kier engagement into a group-level MSP relationship.