What inspired you to pursue the career you are in?
My early inspiration was from my grandad, who after the war worked in a printing business so wasn’t tech minded himself, but saw I had an interest in such things and spent a lot of time providing materials and solutions that I could “break” trying to improve them!
I then progressed this interest as a career after working my way through the ranks as a draughtsman and Drawing Office Manager and used these skills to write solutions and implement processes that assisted those businesses.
It was then a natural progression to work for software businesses (Autodesk as a consultant and then CEO of Cobuilder who specialise in using digital data).
What drives you?
I get a buzz from seeing something implemented that has an impact on someone's working day, or solving a problem and implementing a solution. It’s a never-ending drive for meaningful and deliverable change that drives me as a person in my career.
What is involved in your current role?
Without using buzz words! My role is to take our business drive towards digital as a means of improving our business and our people, and do it in a fast paced timeline.
The main core to this is ensuring all data moves within the business from a constant source that is used, appended and controlled in an efficient manner.
This then leads to a very important part of my role and that is mentoring my team, and developing our people at Exyte Hargreaves. We have continuous learning and development sessions and internal champions for all of the relevant solutions and processes.
Finally, future gazing for our next digital steps and taking the above into account, planning, implementation and proof of concepts, whilst we’ve already gone through an incredible digital change this is only the start of what we plan to achieve.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
Seeing the change the digital solutions, training and processes have on the business, but also how the team members are taking this advantage of working in a fast paced and technology focused business to grow their own skillsets and careers, especially with our younger employees.
I also enjoy the work I do with our key supply chain, and our solution providers, working on long-term changes to digital ways of working for the future is an exciting part of our industry.
How is digitalisation / technology transforming the industry?
Efficiency, communication and data! We have shown at Exyte Hargreaves that with the right focus and correct solutions, processes and people you can move very quickly from Analogue to Digital and the benefits this brings, and there is a lot more to come!
What projects have you worked on and what were your delivery responsibilities?
My roles has mainly been to facilitate the businesses I worked for in terms of digital throughout my career, and I was fortunate to work with some of the main Offsite Construction businesses in the UK, working on major projects across defence, prisons, nuclear and education.
I also spent a number of years working at a forward thinking business called Cobuilder, for a few of those years as their UK CEO. The business worked with manufacturers and contractors of all sizes to assist them on their digital journey and how to structure and use data in a meaningful way.
What challenges have you had to overcome?
I've been quite lucky in my career that most of the businesses I've worked for or with had the vision, and understanding of costs, to implement digital, so while most people may have struggled with that I found it was (mostly) something easy to overcome.
The main challenges are with people and processes, but not in a negative way, ensuring people are involved in the digital changes, have a voice, and have training and support has helped to overcome the somewhat challenging time scales and solutions I've been involved in implementing in the past.
What has been your greatest achievement?
As someone who didn’t do the best at school, I decided at 44 to obtain a Masters degree in BIM Management, and managed to not only obtain this qualification, but did so with a distinction in terms of grade.
What is next for the Digital Innovation and Systems team?
Continued focus on our internal and supply chain training is our next focus, followed by moving the solutions onto their next step of implementation, it’s a cyclic process. Also looking into how we can start to utilise our CDE Dalux with Augmented Reality on a more regular basis on projects.
For the team it is assisting their learning and development and empowering them to move the solutions forward, and represent the department at all levels of the business.
