Peter Bonfield is one of those people who irritatingly bounce around with seemingly unlimited energy. He cycles 18 miles to work every day and then cycles to all his meetings (including this one - he's enve carried his bike up to the ninth floor office that we meet in), before cycling home again. He speaks with great energy too, quickly, rattling off so many questions that you have to remind him he is the one being interviewed rather than the other way round. It's a year since Bonfield, 44, took the helm at construction research body BRE. On his arrival he announced a grandiose plan to double its size within five years. Given that it is already pretty colossal - last year it turned over ￡28m - and as money for construction research is thin on the ground, this sounded ambitious. But he is very pleased with the way things are going. "We have exceeded my expectations over the past year and have grown organically by about 25% by turnover," he says. He adds that staff numbers are also up, by 90, and that the body's profit will have grown significantly this year, although he won't reveal by how much (historically it has been 6% of turnover).
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