A Career in Construction - Part 7

The beginning of my time in Nottingham in the autumn of 1968 was not what I had expected. There was no site based vacancy so I joined a small team in the Regional Office putting together tenders and budgets for private housing and commercial contracts. Although I thoroughly enjoyed my time there with the four other established members of the team, it was pretty much another waste of a couple of years. It was only when I moved to being site based on the huge housing contract at St Annes, that I was getting the experience I needed.

I was again pretty much the junior, even though I was now in my mid twenties. But at least I was given my first job to look after, tiny though it may have been. But the refurbishment of the fountains and paving in Nottingham's Old Market Square was my first contract.

A much more important contract was to follow. The extension to the Loughborough Telephone Exchange was a tricky operation. The groundworks involved digging out a basement next to the existing building, so the contract had a bit of everything. No room to be site based there, I visited from my office at St Annes. My first taste of valuations, site meetings, Sub-Contract payments and financial reporting brought me, at last into the real world, and I was suddenly ready to make my first move after nearly nine years with George Wimpey.