Founder partner of construction consultancy Focus Consultants, Kevin Osbon, has been named in the Top 100 Influential People 2025 Awards.
Kevin is one of the first representatives of the construction sector to receive this prestigious accolade.
The annual UK awards are designed to shine a light on truly influential people who make a positive impact on society.
Current and previous winners have included leading figures in their field such as sculptor Anish Kapoor, Judge Robert Rinder, broadcaster Ben Fogle, rugby league star and ultramarathon charity fundraiser Kevin Sinfield, footballer and Sports Personality of the Year Beth Mead, rugby union British Lion and newly appointed England captain Maro Itoje and Dame Sharon White, the first female CEO of John Lewis Partnership.
Kevin has been hailed as truly influential in the environmental sustainability sphere of the construction sector, particularly for his work in championing social value, sustainability and community placemaking.
He said: “I am slightly shocked but very honoured to have been named in the Top 100 Influential People 2025 Awards."
“Social value and placemaking are two very important subjects that myself and Focus Consultants are passionate about. I am proud that I have helped to raise the profile of both in the construction world by encouraging others to give these topics the prominence that they deserve."
“I hope this award will continue to raise the profile of social value and placemaking in the construction sector, leading to more regeneration, better communities and improved facilities for all.”
After founding Focus Consultants in 1994 from the dining room of his then home in Beeston, Nottingham, Kevin has led the company to become a consultancy with an annual £7.4m fee turnover and a workforce of more than 70.
The company, which has offices in Nottingham, London and Leicester, has secured more than £1 billion in grant-aid funding for communities and helped to create and deliver £4.5 billion worth of projects, establishing Kevin and Focus Consultants as a titan of the construction industry. They have delivered projects that have supported 18,000 jobs over 30 years.
A multi-disciplinary organisation, Focus provides project management, building surveying and quantity surveying, advises on sustainability, carries out business planning and economic development research, and helps clients secure public sector grants for regeneration projects.
For 25 years Kevin has pioneered social value as a concept embedded in the daily operations of Focus Consultants. His leadership and work in this field has led to social value, sustainability and community placemaking rising up the agenda across the sector.
He has contributed to the book Social Value in Practice and also received international acclaim with a paper he co-authored, Co-creating social value in placemaking; the grand balancing act, which won the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) Richard Trevithick Memorial Fund Award 2023 for the best international paper on sustainability and social value. It was focused on Nottingham, but provided guidelines that are applicable nationwide.
Kevin has also helped to raise more than £1m in charitable contributions, circa £540,000 in cash and circa £700,000 in kind.
Keen to share his knowledge and inspire others, Kevin worked for many years as a part-time lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, and also provided pro-bono support, alongside his role at Focus.
Under Kevin’s leadership, Focus Consultants has become an official partner of Nottingham Trent University’s School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment (ADBE) and its newly launched, cutting-edge £1.5m Centre for Sustainable Construction and Retrofit to help the UK construction sector reach net-zero carbon. This partnership demonstrates Kevin’s influence in aligning professional practice with cutting-edge sustainability research.
In recognition of Kevin’s pro-bono contribution to the university, NTU appointed him an Alumni and Industry Fellow in 2024.
Among Kevin’s notable placemaking achievements are the £20m Bristol Aerospace Centre - which created a home for Concorde 216 and the Bristol Aerospace Collection, preserved a key Listed part of Filton Airfield and opened an Aerospace Engineering Centre of Excellence – and St George’s Cultural Quarter in Leicester, which delivered £100m of public investment and attracted £200m in private sector investment, and was followed by the development of further Cultural Quarters using his best-practice methodologies all over the UK from Nottingham to Southampton, Eastbourne to Lincoln.
