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Analysts have said chief executive Andrew Davies鈥檚 rebuilding of Kier鈥檚 top team is set to continue after last week鈥檚 news it had lured Laing O鈥橰ourke鈥檚 building boss to head up its construction business.

The arrival of Liam Cummins followed the appointment of a new group commercial director over the summer with Kier poaching Stuart Togwell, the highly-regarded former group commercial director at Wates.

Davies made Togwell, who arrived with little fanfare, one of his first recruits and a former colleague said: 鈥淎s a commercial brain, Stuart is brilliant. Governance, risk management 鈥� he鈥檚 brilliant.鈥�

Togwell had been at Wates, where Davies was for nearly four years before leaving to take up the chief executive鈥檚 role at Carillion, for more than three decades.

Last week Kier announced that Davies had persuaded Cummins (pictured) to leave the firm after 15 years and become its new group managing director of construction to replace the retiring Peter Young.

One source said: 鈥淭hey鈥檝e gone and got a big hitter operationally, if they can steady the ship they鈥檝e got the bones of a good construction business there.鈥�

Howard Seymour, analyst at Numis, said: 鈥淟iam Cummins is an extremely good man and a great hire in my view. I think management is working hard at restoring the fortunes of the business.鈥�

And Cenkos analyst Kevin Cammack added that he expected Davies to bring in more new faces: 鈥淚f you join a failing company, one of the first things you do is build your own team around you. The FD [Bev Dew] went pretty quickly. I don鈥檛 suppose [Davies] will stop there.鈥�

One rival contractor said: 鈥淜ier definitely need two or three big hitters who are positively rated so [these appointments] are a start. Davies is a smart guy. Maybe [Cummins] needed a new lease of life. Davies is a very polished individual and maybe [Cummins] can hang onto his coattails and become a bigger player.鈥�

Davies has begun a restructuring initiative to reduce its crippling debt pile and turn the business around which will see 1,200 jobs go by next summer and the firm sell off its housing arm.

Seymour said: 鈥淜ier is not a broken business operationally 鈥� it retains a high number of quality businesses.

鈥淚 think recent speculation and comments relating to potential sale of debt and prompt payment code infringement have been given more prominence than they should as they reflect the historic position or may not be an accurate assessment of current position.鈥�

Kier, which crashed to a 拢245m pre-tax loss in the year to June, is hoping to get a deal in place for its Kier Living residential arm by the end of its half year which finishes in December.