Kirby Laing took over the running of the Laing Group, the construction and engineering company, from his father, Sir John, in 1957. With his brother Maurice (obituary, February 28, 2008), they continued the family business which was first established in 1848. They expanded its construction of property, power stations, roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects, making it one of Britain’s best-known construction companies. Under his leadership the company built the M1 and the Bullring shopping complex in Birmingham.

Laing stepped aside as chairman to let his brother take over in 1976, becoming deputy-chairman and then chairman of Laing Properties, which was demerged from the group in 1978. Laing’s son, Martin, later took over the running of the group from Sir Maurice Laing.

Laing Properties prospered under Laing, amassing assets of about £1 billion before being taken over by P&O and Elliott Bernerd’s company Chelsfield.

Laing fiercely resisted the takeover but was ultimately unsuccessful. However, the move soon proved to be felicitous as it turned out the company had been bought at the top of the market. The proceeds from that takeover were put into a new company, Eskmuir Properties, which invested in industrial property. The company, which had nearly £300 million in assets, was floated in 1998 but control fell back into the Laing family’s hands after a management buyout in 2000.

A quiet, patient man, Laing continued his father’s efforts in offering generous benefits to staff and devoting much of his time to the Church and to charities. He set up his own charity, the Kirby Laing Foundation, providing funding to charitable causes, and became president of the Albert Hall’s governing council.

Despite being more softly-spoken than his brother, Laing could be outspoken in his criticism of government policy, particularly in his role as president of the National Federation of Building Trades Employers.

Born in 1916 in Carlisle into a Border family which maintained firm religious principles, William Kirby Laing was destined to follow his father into building and construction in London. As small boys in Carlisle, Laing and his younger brother Maurice were encouraged by their father to visit construction sites with him and to get to know as many of the site team as they could, picking up on the way an understanding of the essentials of good building.

After school at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate (where he joined the Crusaders Union and so began an active participation in forms of Christian fellowship), Laing proceeded to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, which he left with an engineering degree in 1937 to enter the family business as a trainee.

He had joined the Territorial Army (RE) and was called up just before the outbreak of war in 1939. Temporarily released to work with his company on barrage balloon stations, aerodromes and temporary military hospitals, he was recalled in 1943 and served out the war with the Royal Engineers in France and Italy.

He subsequently rejoined the company on the property development side, his brother having responsibility for building. In 1946, with his father Sir John, Laing visited southern Africa and that visit resulted in the establishment of a business in what was then the Union of South Africa, in association with the Roberts Construction group. It was this development which in 1949 took Laing (by then managing director of Laing Properties) to Johannesburg as the parent board’s representative. In 1951 he returned to London, engaging in development of commercial buildings, factories and housing. He was appointed chairman of the Laing Group in 1957, in which year his father, then 75, became life president, his brother Maurice becoming deputy-chairman.

Laing was knighted in 1968 for services to the construction industry. He continued to work in the field of technical training and apprenticeship begun by his father, which earned the group its reputation for good craftsmanship — and of which their building of Coventry Cathedral to Sir Basil Spence’s designs is but one example.

Laing also established the annual Laing painting award — open to amateurs as well as professionals — which followed his commissioning of a series of important paintings of building work under construction.

In the field of industrial relations Laing brought his company’s reputation for fair dealing to bear in his chairmanship from 1968 to 74 of the National Joint Council, a vital but frustrating job which involved much mediation between different unions but in which the patience and tenacity, born of a Border upbringing, enabled him to achieve much success.

At that time the Civil Engineering Federation (in which his brother was among the leaders) was in separate negotiation with the same unions, leapfrogging of wage rates being a not unpredictable result. Largely as a result of his work, the present Building and Civil Engineering Joint Board came into being and a closer integration of views was to follow. This was something which Laing regarded as one of his more important achievements.

Laing served his industry in other ways, as president in 1958 of the London Master Builders Association and as president of the National Federation of Building Trades Employers in 1965 and again for a period in 1967-68. For some years he was on the council of the Institution of Civil Engineers whose president he became in 1973. He was a Fellow of the Institute of Building.

No reference to Laing’s life would be complete without mention of the Christian home influence in his early years — an influence that was to set the pattern of his convictions for the rest of his life. He was a steadfast but unostentatious supporter of evangelical Christian causes, educational charities and medical research.

Laing was elected to honorary membership of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1975 and elected to the Fellowship of Engineering in 1977. He was a governor of his former school, St Lawrence College, and of the Polytechnic of Central London, as well as being a council member of the Albert Hall — he was president of the council from 1979 to 1992.

He was JP for the Middlesex area of Greater London. He was appointed Deputy-Lieutenant for Greater London from 1978 to 1991.

Laing’s first wife predeceased him, and he is survived by his second wife, Isobel, and his three sons.

Sir Kirby Laing, industrialist, was born on July 21, 1916. He died on April 12, 2009, aged 92