Charlie Spencer, who founded the company in 1989, is stepping up from CEO to become chairman.
Mr Millar, aged 49, is operations director of Costain’s Natural Resources division, which includes its activities within the oil and gas, nuclear process, water and waste sectors. He has been with Costain for eight years. Before that, he spent 10 years with Amec, managing projects in the UK, Russia and North America.
His engineering career began in the British Army where he served as an officer with the Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers.
Mr Millar is also of the Engineering Construction Industry Association (ECIA).
Much of Spencer Group’s workload is in the rail sector but it also has a growing energy portfolio. Projects have included designing and building a biomass reception, handling and storage facility at Drax power station in 2010. It is currently developing Energy Works, a £150m renewable energy plant in its home town of Hull.
Mr Spencer said: “Process engineering is a capability we want to build upon within the business and there are very significant construction and engineering opportunities, particularly within the oil and gas sector, that we wish to explore.
“Frank comes to us with exceptional credentials from his work with two highly-respected, stock market-quoted engineering groups. That experience will be invaluable to take Spencer Group further forward from what is already a sizeable business.”
He added: “I am moving up to chairman because I recognise that the business needs a CEO with Frank’s experience to take it forward. As chairman I will still be actively involved in the business and in its strategic direction, but I will be handing over the day-to-day running of Spencer Group to Frank and a very experienced existing management team and supporting them fully in developing the business.”
Mr Millar said: “I was looking for a new business leadership challenge and Spencer Group clearly offers that. It’s an exciting business with a strong presence and excellent reputation in the markets it currently operates in. It has a very clear preference towards innovation and developing new ideas and that’s very attractive, appealing and challenging.
“My ambition for the business it is to lead it into new markets, taking the company’s high-level engineering capability and growing into more sectors than the business is currently represented within.”
Mr Millar has a Masters degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College London and an MSc in project management from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). He is a chartered engineer and a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
His recruitment is the latest in a series of senior appointments at Spencer Group that have seen David McLoughlin recruited from Network Rail to be chief executive of Spencer Rail and industry veteran Norman Haste become Spencer’s first non-executive director.
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