Construction
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There is likely to be a big demand for those with construction skills in coming years. Private sector housing and the industrial and commercial sectors will be the main drivers for the industry. Growth in public infrastructure and low carbon will also be increasingly important with an increasing number of ‘green’ contracts and careers routes. These include careers in new eco-friendly energy plants and retrofitting buildings with energy-efficient fabric and technology.
Construction Resources
icould Video Interviews
Paul Saunders - Operations Manager
Paul Saunders is an Operations Manager for Aggregate Industries, looking after five different manufacturing facilities. "I started off on the shop floor. So I went back almost back down to below sort of degree level and got to get my hands dirty. And just earned their respect through doing the job that they were doing as well as they were doing it, and being polite."
Paul Ratcliffe - Production Team Leader
Paul Ratcliffe is a Production Team Leader in an Aggregate Industries factory. He started working for Aggregate Industries in a manual job. They paid well and he wanted to support his family. Four years ago they sent him to college and now he is supervising production in one of their factories. "I've actually got the job now I've wanted for quite a few years."
Michael Herbert - National Manager
Mick Herbert is National Technical Manager at Aggregate Industries. He is involved with 38 factories in the UK and overseas. He started his career in the Royal Fleet Auxilliary, and served in the Falklands conflict. He found a niche at Aggregate when he wanted to settle down and has worked for the company ever since.
James Pearson - Chartered Surveyor
James Pearson is a Chartered Surveyor at Colliers International (formerly Colliers CRE). Gap years have been an education for him. On a gap year he got a job with Colliers in Sydney - "It was just the most brilliant experience... it was just a brilliant lifestyle and the people are fantastic. I was in different properties every day". He now specialises in shops.
Anthony Bursey - Technical Director, Sustainability
Antony Bursey is a Director for Sustainability at Halcrow. One of the buildings he worked on won an award for sustainability - working towards zero carbon is important to him. He found the maths in engineering hard, but persevered. He started research in biomedical engineering, but later found working with architects more interesting.
Rachel Fowler - Regional Director
Rachel Fowler is a Regional Director for engineering company Halcrow. Rachel changes the way our coast looks. She liked damming streams as a child. She used this passion to save Lee on Solent's coast from being eroded. Her big challenge is to deal with climate change and the environment.
Julian Johanson-Brown - Associate Director
Julian Johanson-Brown is an Associate Director in the Maritime Business Group at Halcrow. "I'm talking to international shipping firms and operators around the world, either identifying new sites or developing existing sites for port development." He often deals with investment banks looking to invest billions of dollars in maritime business. In spite of his senior position in the company it still hurts that he failed to become a pilot, his first choice of career, because his eyesight wasn't up to scratch.
Alex Jones - Graduate Engineer
Alex Jones is an engineer working for Halcrow. At the moment he's working on flood defence schemes. He wasn't sure if he was clever enough to get into university, but he got on well with the interviewer, who continued to be his mentor all the way through his course. Now he's working on becoming chartered as an engineer. After that he hopes to take up one of the engineering opportunities that are coming up all over the world, in New Zealand, Australia and the Middle and Far East.
Lorna Davis - Landscape Architect
Lorna Davis is a Landscape Architect at Halcrow - "I create spaces that people want to live in, and also open up the opportunity for encouraging wildlife, and encouraging habitat creation." But she chose the subject by chance. "I wrote a list of all the courses that I could do with what I'd done at school - which was Geography, Art and Design, and Design and Technology. So having written this list down, I shut my eyes, and I got a pen, and I stuck it in the page. And it stuck on Landscape Architecture." Now she had decided that it was a good choice, and it really is something she wants to keep on doing.
Andy Perry - Project Manager
Andy Perry is a project manager for Halcrow. He went to Australia and the Far East for a few years after he graduated and when he came back he was too old to do what he wanted to do - to be a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm. So he returned to college and did a Masters in Applied and Environmental Geology. At the moment he's working on the reclamation of Ebbw Vale Steelworks. "We're providing all the engineering services on that job. My job is to make things as simple and understandable as possible... It's like Lego on a real scale."
