Sir Robert McAlpine Limited is a family-owned building and civil engineering company based in Hemel Hempstead, England.

From there, McAlpine enjoyed rapid success; the early contracts centred on his own trade of bricklaying and by 1874 he was the owner of two brickyards and an employer of 1,000 men.

Winning a contract for the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway without the necessary technical knowledge, the subsequent rebuilding work and litigation meant another fresh start.

Gray wrote that Sir Robert McAlpine “seemed to have been involved in every major building and civil engineering project that ever hit the headlines of the day.” They included docks, harbours, power stations, factories; the Wembley Stadium and the Dorchester Hotel were notable examples.

In 2023, Hamer reviewed the firm's structure and switched its focus to sectors rather than regions; the restructure was estimated to cost £8.4m and would result in annual savings of over £20m.

The song "McAlpine's Fusiliers" (written by Dominic Behan and made famous by The Dubliners) described the realities of life on the building site for many Irish expatriates.

[19] Projects undertaken by the company have included: Sir Robert McAlpine is also involved in HS2 lot C1, working as part of joint venture, due to complete in 2031.

[46] Sir Robert McAlpine funded the initial establishment of the Consulting Association in 1993, providing £20,000, around half of which was used to buy a blacklist database from the Economic League and hire one of its former employees, Ian Kerr, as manager.

[47][48] Company director Cullum McAlpine served as chairman of the Consulting Association for some years before it became publicly implicated in a construction industry blacklisting scandal in 2009 and was wound up.

Subsequently, Sir Robert McAlpine was one of eight businesses involved in the 2014 launch of the Construction Workers Compensation Scheme,[49] though this was condemned as a "PR stunt" by the GMB union, and described by the Scottish Affairs Select Committee as "an act of bad faith".

[50] On 11 May 2016, major companies, including Sir Robert McAlpine, issued an "unreserved and sincere" apology in the high court to hundreds of workers for putting them on the illegal blacklist and denying them work over two decades.

The companies agreed to pay sums ranging from £25,000 to £200,000 to 771 people under out-of-court settlements to avoid a trial, while accepting that "their secret vetting operation should never have happened".

The targets of the victims' intended criminal complaint included director Cullum McAlpine, and head of human resources, David Cochrane, who was a later chairman of the Association.