Costain’s board director for strategy and change has left the business ahead of planned redundancies at the firm’s business transformation team.

Abi Lalani has exited as the main broad closes out the present 3-year transformation programme and put the team of around 30 staff into redundancy consultation.

The team now subject to the change have been the primary driver behind large volumes of group-wide redundancies many from the highways business since the beginning of transformation in 2022.

Costain is understood to have told staff that some work will be covered through new 18-month fixed-term roles in Risk & Assurance, including a Head of Controls Transformation and a process improvement role.

There may also be roles created in Digital Transformation, where a new director joined earlier this year.

A Costain spokesperson said: “We are consulting on proposed changes to our Strategy and Transformation team following the successful completion of our three-year transformation programme and are supporting our people during the process.”

Between 2022 and 2024, Costain invested more than £17m in its Transformation programme

In its annual reports, Costain said the programme had exceeded targets and contributed to margin improvements from 2.6% in 2022 to 3.4% in 2024.