I am an experienced, well rounded, commercial engineer with a pragmatic and engaging nature. I enjoy success and strive to achieve success in everything I do.
I fancied a job that was varied, that wouldn't tie me to a desk and had the opportunity to live and work overseas. It was either merchant navy or civil engineering and my dad suggested civil engineering would be the wise move; he was right I'm not much of a sailor.
In my younger days, up to the age of 16, I was a mad keen swimmer. Training every day of the week, morning before school and every evening instilled dedication, application and competitiveness into my soul. I earned my county colours, was Hull and District champion for three years running and swam for England schools. I also then went on to win a place in the national triathlon championships at crystal palace (running swimming and shooting). Traveling the country every weekend to swim in various competitions interacting with people to support and encourage has been invaluable in my career. I am at ease with even the most pressured situations and can lead teams to goals from the front and by example. My swimming career waned as the work load increased at school and back in those days you never were going to make a living being a swimmer so I concentrated on school work and attended college to complete an ordinary national certificate in Civil engineering.
With every intention of going on from that to University the recession of the late eighties set in and an opportunity to join Beverly Borough Council as a trainee technician arose. I applied and was successful. The three or four years I had there provided me with a tremendous grounding in dealing with people, with various engineering challenges and helped me through gaining a higher national diploma in Civil Engineering at the Hull School of Architecture.. From there are joined a small niche civil engineering consultancy in Barton on Humber, John Whitley. John was a fantastic business man and I learnt a lot from him. He was extremely entrepreneurial and encouraged me to be the same. The business grew tremendously and John successfully sold the business on to an American company who went on to acquire Travers Morgan, one of the biggest UK engineering consultancies at the time.
Through that acquisition I began working for various parts of that business and in various parts of the country. Seconded to their Nottingham office in 1993 I met Steve Wooler, little did I know then that our paths would cross four years later.
I left Travers Morgan to join Peter Brett Associates in their Berlin office in 1994. The reunification of Germany provided a fantastic environment to live and work. I was lucky enough to design some fantastic new infrastructure projects to modernise the infrastructure in many of the former East German towns and villages. I also worked on projects in Poland and in the Chec Republic. It was a fantastic for my family to experience living in a foreign country and immersing ourselves in that culture. Exactly the sort of thing I had wanted to do when choosing to become a civil engineer. As our children approached school age we made the decision to return to the UK and by chance an agent put me in touch with BWB and Steve Wooler.
I took the job with BWB commuting the 85 miles from Barton on Humber (home) to Nottingham on a daily basis. The long days were worth it as we were part of a thriving and growing company and the entrepreneurial spirit, dedication and determination that was now part of my DNA assisted our team and the wider business to grow significantly.
I was given the opportunity to open a regional office in Leeds in November 2002 and grew that part of the business to become one of Yorkshires most recognised and respected engineering consultancies.
In 2008 I was asked to be part of the Management Buy-Out team and became an Executive Director of BWB. That role through the recession was particularly difficult but incredibly rewarding in terms of forging a very good sense of direction and path in which to take the business in the future.
I became a Fellow of The Institution of Civil Engineers in 2009; I am still leading projects, leading design teams and interacting with clients. I am able to mix all of that with developing our business strategy and direction. I have an incredibly rewarding job and have certainly achieved my dream job when I look back at the original reasons for becoming a Civil Engineer.
Paragon Business Village in Wakefield. Not the biggest job I have lead at BWB but the first one that I developed in terms of relationship building with a new client. Some 12 years after first meeting the client we are still working on projects together, BWB are their engineer of choice and we have become good friends over the years
Love spending time with the family, at home or traveling. We have two lively dogs a springer spanial and a pointer and we enjoy taking them on long walks in the country
I will be enjoying leading a successful international engineering consultancy business
