Balfour Beatty has announced that Anne Drinkwater will take on the position of senior independent non-executive director in May.
She replaces Stephen Billingham, who will step down from the board after the next annual general meeting.
Drinkwater has served as a non-executive director for Balfour since December 2018. She will continue to chair the remuneration committee and sit on the safety and sustainability committee in her new role.
Drinkwater previously held several senior leadership roles at BP, including chief executive of BP Canada and group vice president, before retiring in 2012.
Since July 2022, she has also served as deputy chair of the board of Equinor ASA, a multinational energy company owned by the state of Norway.
Billingham, who currently chairs the audit and risk committee and sits on the nomination committee, was appointed a non-executive director in June 2015.
He was previously chief financial officer of WS Atkins, now AtkinsRéalis, and British Energy, which was taken over by EDF in 2009. He also spent 11 years at BICC, Balfour Beatty’s predecessor.
He is non-executive chairman of Urenco Ltd, a nuclear fuel consortium that operates several uranium enrichment plants, and has also been chairman of Anglian Water and the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust.
