ALAN LOVELL would make a good doctor. Smiley and upbeat, chugging the conversation along with his relentless laughter, he could happily offer a terminal diagnosis and make it feel little more than a pin-prick.

But then Lovell can always see the sunny side. Why else would he have taken on the top job at Jarvis, the supply- services giant that crashed into loss last year and by October, when he joined, was widely written off as a basket case? “I guess part of the buzz is just being in crisis,” he grins. But there is also the slow working through to recovery.

At Jarvis, he took another step closer to that goal two weeks ago when he negotiated its complex refinancing of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deals that had torpedoed the company’s earnings. Then he went on holiday.

Is he allowed to do that? Sure, he smiles. “An adventure trek to Borneo, up a mountain. Rather more adventurous than I’d expected.”

So he wasn’t on a hush-hush mission to find new investors? He collapses into giggles again. “No,” he says, “not at all.”

It’s only relevant because Lovell, 51, a former Plessey manager who’s built a distinguished career as a company doctor, has form in the Far East. It was a Malaysian investor who saved Costain, another of his patients, back in the mid-1990s. A repeat of that would do nicely right now.

But for some at Jarvis it’s already too late. Lovell is sitting in shirtsleeves on the third floor of a soon-to-be-vacated head office in London’s Farringdon. Outside his glass box, the removal sacks are already being packed. Steadily shrinking its London floor occupancy, Jarvis will shortly move its HQ to York, closer to its rail-track renewal business. It sold out of Tube Lines, the consortium running part of London Underground, in December. Other non-core interests have followed. Most of the staff I can see outside are leaving the firm.

That must be awkward, walking through the departees each morning. “It helps to maintain a certain distance,” says Lovell soberly. Then he’s back to bright and bouncy.

So why would anyone in his right mind take this on? Forget the fact that Jarvis’s PFI work rebuilding hospitals and schools came to a standstill months ago when it couldn’t pay subcontractors. It’s been under investigation for the quality of its railway-maintenance work — now handed back to Network Rail — and may yet be fingered in the ongoing inquiry into the Potters Bar rail crash, in which seven people died. All sorts of accusations have been thrown at some of its former executives. That, as Lovell concedes, leaves Jarvis with quite a few “reputational issues”.

Once a Victorian construction company, more recently built up by former boss Paris Moayedi into a £1.1 billion- turnover contractor, the group is now in intensive care, crippled by bidding too cheaply to win big contracts. And even if Lovell’s planned revival is pushed through — paring it down to three legs: track laying, road maintenance and plant hire — it will still have a £275m debt mountain. Why carry on? Because at its core Jarvis has some very good businesses. “The rail-renewal business in particular is very important,” says Lovell. “We’ve got sophisticated equipment and expertise that nobody else has, and we’re picking up work.” The patient’s hopes of recovery, minus a limb or two, could be good.

Tell that to those waiting for the rebuilding of the Whittington hospital in north London — work still stopped despite Jarvis’s PFI refinancing — or parents hoping for school refurbishments. Let’s not even mention rail safety. Some feel the company should be paying a higher price.

Lovell, not surprisingly, disagrees. “The shareholders have already suffered enormously.”

And executives at the top? “We have a completely new board and none of the executives has been a board director for longer than a year.” Departing executives did leave with payoffs but they were “contractual entitlements” that couldn’t be withheld.

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