An unusual but effective blend of a Civil Engineer and Environmental Scientist with megalomaniac tendencies and a competitive streak.
I spent most of my childhood either building or dismantling stuff to see how it worked so it was inevitable that I would end up somewhere in construction. After early ambitions to be an architect, a combination of work experience scheduling doors and windows and a general acknowledgement of absence of artistic flair brought me to the realisation that engineering was much more my thing.
Brought up in a mining town in Nottinghamshire I had my 15 minutes of fame in 1984 at 12 years old when I made the BBC news, first crossing a picket line, then a police line with a bag of chips in my hand and blissfully unaware of the menace surrounding me.
After a short stint at technical college and some highly informative work experience, I attended Nottingham Trent University as an undergraduate and fell in love with the pubs and music venues of that great city. My early career was spent at Mansfield District Council working in their sewerage team, where I picked up much of the drainage experience that has served me well since then. At that time I enrolled on a part time post graduate diploma course in water and environmental management at Sheffield Hallam University.
I left the public sector lifestyle to join International Mining Consultants and spent the next four years fixing the legacy issues of the by then derelict mining industry, addressing environmental liabilities and redeveloping former collieries and finished of my studies by undertaking a Master of Science degree at Liverpool John Moores University.
With the dawn of the new millennium I was getting itchy feet again and after a short hop through David Wilson Homes engineering team, I joined BWB as a senior infrastructure engineer in the summer of 2000. It was immediately obvious to me that this was where I fit and I thoroughly enjoyed the pace and general buzz of the place. Shortly after joining the company I established a team specialising in flood risk assessment work and over the next few years became fully engaged in growing that business stream into a division turning £1m in fees and capable of high tech modelling and analysis.
I spent my time leading the Water Division and Infrastructure teams in both Nottingham and Birmingham and in 2008 I was invited to join the team behind a management buyout of the company. In 2011 the company was restructured into three groups and I was appointed Group Director for the Environment Group and given a remit to secure growth and diversify BWB's services.
The last five years has been a roller coaster ride of striving through recession, protecting the company's skills base and creating growth in difficult times but I am proud to have been a key player in the team that has led the company to such a great place in spite of market adversity.
Taking a £3000 fee proposal for the first flood risk assessment in the Trent region and building it into a £1,000,000 fee income business over six years. I've travelled that journey with some fantastic colleagues in the team and it has been great to watch them grow individually and progress into senior positions in the business.
Mostly spending time with my wife and two daughters and I occasionally escape to walk the hills of the dark peak with my black Labrador, who suffers in silence with me living in a house full of women. I'm also currently working on my Scuba Diving ticket (an equally peaceful and solitary activity to walking the peak district, although I can't take the dog). When I can bring myself to ignore how young everyone seem to be these days I'm often to be found on a Friday or Saturday night slightly inebriated in age inappropriate music venues and pubs in and around my beloved Nottingham.
Working to my own agenda developing cutting edge technologies and services to deliver through BWB's environmental business empire, then going home at 5pm to spend the evenings and weekends with my wife and children and by then slightly geriatric dog.
