His promotion comes as former north east boss James Wimpenny rises to the board of BAM Construct UK.

Wimpenny moves upstairs to replace John Burke, who is retiring from the position of executive director of BAM Construct UK and managing director of BAM Properties at the end of this month.

Wimpenny (above) joins Graham Cash, chairman, and Richard Bailey, construction director on the board from 1 October.

Under Wimpenny, BAM Construction expanded in recent years to rank as Yorkshire’s largest construction contractor by turnover.

BAM’s North East team now employs over 150 people directly, and provides work for around 1000 subcontractors every year.

It is behind around 20 schemes currently including ones for Lincoln University, Leeds Beckett University, Bradford Royal Infirmary, Sunderland College and Leeds UTC.

New boss Phillips is a civil engineer from Leeds who started out with Wetherby based A Monk & Co. He joined BAM in 1989 when the company was called Higgs and Hill and was based in Birstall.

It re-located to Thorpe Park in 2006.