Brian Johnson

Biography

Brian graduated in chemical engineering at Cambridge University and worked in ICI for 15 years doing research work, technology development, site production management and business restructuring leadership. Whilst working in Louisiana in the early ‘90s, he led the design and commissioning of the world’s first industrial scale plant making ozone friendly refrigerants.

After a short spell in Tate and Lyle, he moved to Remploy for 4 years, a company employing 6,000 disabled people in its extensive manufacturing activities around 80 UK sites, where he was Operations Director. The introduction of intensive personal learning activity and full engagement of factory teams in improvement work created productivity gains of up to 60% and gave many of the employees the confidence to find employment outside Remploy.

He moved to the affordable housing sector where he was CEO of 3 companies over 13 years. Most recently of Metropolitan. Over 5 years, he led a team that turned around Metropolitan from near collapse to a sector high performer - substantially increasing its annual profits from a break even position, re-establishing a large new build programme, and making significant, lasting improvement to the personal resilience of 17,000 customers per year. Most recently, he has been doing interim leadership work in the bio-pharmaceutical sector.