Stuart Graham
The new American chief executive of Skanska will this month conclude a top-level review of the firm's businesses worldwide. Expect big changes in the deployment of Skanska's forces.

Will Alsop
The jolly architect's peculiar brand of blobular, stilt-propped architecture may no longer be the height of fashion, but Alsop has hit the big time. Multicoloured structures resembling vegetables, cakes and crumpled boxes are popping up all over London; his plans to encircle Barnsley with fruity ramparts are inspired lunacy; and last month he beat Rogers and Foster to win his most prestigious UK project to date: the Fourth Grace in Liverpool, which looks like a squashed doughnut oozing jam.

George Ferguson
The red-trousered Bristol architect becomes RIBA president. Many architects are struggling to come to terms with new forms of procurement and the education system is a mess. Can Ferguson turn the bickering, insular institute around?

Peter Rogers
The Stanhope director has a tough brief as chair of the strategic forum: the government now expects the industry to stand on its own two feet and most firms are bored of hearing about the Egan agenda. Also, he hates committees 鈥�

Richard Bowker
The Strategic Rail Authority chairman now controls the purse strings; what he does this year could make the difference between renaissance and terminal decline on Britain's railways.

David Higgins
The Lend Lease boss takes up the reins as chief executive of regeneration quango English Partnerships this spring. With the urban renaissance stalled and the housing crisis getting worse, he will have his work cut out.

The year ahead