‘I’m proud that I’ve brought people into the industry’

I’m the managing director of GHPC Group, a construction consultancy, and have been for just under 10 years now. We provide CDM principal designer, CDM adviser and health and safety services, and we also provide surveying defects claim services.

I’m based in our offices in Bracknell, and we have 18 staff across the group. Our admin team – HR and accounts – are in Scotland but all our services are delivered in the south from about Manchester right down to the south west and Wales.

I became a chartered quantity surveyor, but it was quite by chance. I was thinking of a career in the printing industry but my school had no careers information on that. However, they did have leaflets for Glasgow College of Building and Printing, which was affiliated to the Glasgow College of Technology (now Caledonian University). 

I had an interview there and the head of surveying saw I was doing economics and accounts for my highers (A-levels in Scotland) and suggested I should be a QS. So I did a four-year sandwich degree course.

I worked with a practice in Glasgow, the Gordon Harris Partnership, and got some good experience there, working on prestigious hotel projects, and became chartered. 

I subsequently moved south and worked for several PQS firms before rejoining GHP, and found myself becoming a specialist in construction claims. Over about a decade, I handled major claims and did lots of arbitration and ADR work. During that period, I was often seconded to contractors as a professional QS to put their claims together, going through all the forensics and assembling their loss and expense claims.

My managing partner and I then formed a practice to manage Zurich’s new home claims.

I got involved in CDM in about 2001/2 and really enjoyed it. We set up a company called GHP Consultancy which offered a range of services and we went from strength to strength.

When the regs changed in 2007, I moved to Rider Levett Bucknall as a partner, and headed up their CDM team for several years. I did seven years there. Our current chairman, who was my ex business partner, had been asking me for about a year to come and join GHPC Group – and I was persuaded when they said they wanted me to take over as managing director, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.

I’m proud of the fact that I’ve brought people into the industry and trained them up from being non-cognate graduates – that is, they had not studied a related vocational course – to having a career in construction, health and safety. 

I’m also proud of the fact that we’ve invested in people, and we care about our team. We’re small enough to really care. It’s lovely to see so many young women coming into the industry nowadays – such a contrast to when I started. And I’m proud to have brought both young and more mature women into the industry. 

Construction is a great career. It’s really interesting, and health and safety is very interesting. But I have come across people who don’t have the passion for it, and they haven’t lasted very long with us – because if you haven’t got passion for H&S, you’re more likely to miss important safety issues.

I’m also proud of my work with CONIAC [the Construction Industry Advisory Committee]. I’m co-chair of its Supporting Small Employers group, and we’ve produced some really targeted health and safety infographics to provide ‘bite-size’ guidance to help small employers understand compliance on some issues, such as dealing with asbestos and low-carbon repair and maintenance.

And of course, I’m delighted to have become a non-executive director of APS, working with the board, during this challenging time for the industry. Having been a member since 2008, it’s an opportunity to contribute to the health and safety aims of APS and represent CDM professionals.  

Since Covid, being an employer has become harder. With the advent of hybrid and remote working, the biggest challenge has been to get the right mix of people back in the office and communicating. It’s harder to manage and motivate people – I definitely think we’ve lost something.

Yes, I think things have improved with bigger projects since the old days and the CDM regs have really helped, though I’m also aware that the industry’s fatality figures have been creeping back up, and we’re not sure why.

I think the image of health and safety has improved too. But I still think there’s a problem at the lower end of the industry, particularly on domestic projects such as extensions, where CDM awareness is very low. 

The biggest issue for me is the Building Safety Act. It’s presenting many issues for the industry.

I can see the need for the act, and I’m not saying it’s gone too far. But the industry definitely has an issue with competence and training and having adequate resources to cope with its challenges.

It’s got to work but at the same time, what you can’t have is people disengaging from the ethos that Dame Judith was aiming for. And at the moment, I just think that the industry’s got a long way to go to achieve the ambitions that Dame Judith has expressed for it.

The legislation is onerous, but I think that there’s still a lack of understanding about what’s required and since Covid, the industry has lost a lot of expertise, and I think the important focus now should be on getting it right in the first place.

I look at the issue of the choice of dutyholder title for the building regs also being the principal designer (PD), and I’m not sure people have understood this. It’s confusing them. And there aren’t enough people with the right level of expertise to take on either the CDM PD or building regulation PD role – and definitely fewer capable of both competencies. 

Spending time with my husband and family, I have three adult children and two granddaughters. Holidays are important and I enjoy home improvement projects especially gardening. I also like watching TV programmes on domestic building projects and gardening and holidays for their ideas, and they also help me chill out.

But it’s hard to get very far away from work, and I’m forever researching things that interest me and seeing how they could apply to projects we’re working on.

I like to share my ideas and thoughts with clients, and I will email them on items which may be relevant, which I’ve researched. I also encourage my team to do the same thing with our clients. It’s a way of spreading ‘best practice’ and trying to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that too many people in the industry keep on making.