A Career in Construction Part 27

I enjoyed my time in the Langley regional office. Although my main job was now processing Sub-Contract documents,I was still taking an active role in the previous contracts, including the Bath Road jobs and Epsom. I also inherited some administration on a few old contracts but overall, the year 2000 was pretty uneventful. And so was the start of 2001. I had also taken over a just completed contract for Gillette in Reading and the setting up and then managing the start of another large industrial job at Hanworth. Before this contract started I had to go to York in the May of 2001 to show the estimators that having had so many addendums and alterations during the tender process, they had somehow managed to end up with a negative quantity of excavated material to be removed from site. Apart from that, Hanworth went really well.

Into 2002 and nothing much changed. Lots of work on the completed but complicated Bath Road contracts, lots of administration on many old jobs, Sub-Contract documents to process and Hanworth in it's final stages. However in the summer of 2002, the company was negotiating a huge apartments complex called Discovery Dock near Canary Wharf. There were to be 185 luxury apartments over 23 storeys with a contract value of £42.4 million.

It was this contract that would take up most of my time for the next couple of years. I was given the responsibility for the whole of the negotiating and procurement of all the Sub-Contracts, and this involved some massive packages of work. My most successful negotiation ever was for the Joinery , all mdf doors, frames, skirtings and architraves. When we found the right Sub-Contractor we made over £1 Million on letting the work inside the tender allowance. This helped towards a bonus that we were paid in 2004.

The contract started in September 2002 and by early 2003 I was making regular visits to site. By this time I had relinquished all responsibility for processing Sub-Contract documents (apart from my own) and instead took on a couple of Sub-Contractors to look after their accounts on site. Both 2003 and 2004 were very busy years, but it was great being involved with a big team set up in a smart offices on site. However I had the best of both worlds, keeping my office in Langley with visits to Docklands once or twice a week.

In the September of 2004 I was finalising the Sub-Contracts for the last few trades on Discovery Dock when the region was awarded a laboratory complex called Burlington Danes on Du Cane Road in West London. At 12,000 Square Meters and a value of £35 million, another huge contract.

This was interesting to me as I had attended the school that had been demolished to make way for this project. The school was St Clement Danes, an all boys grammar school that became part of the comprehensive Burlington Danes School when it was merged with the girls Burlington Grammar next door.

So in the October of 2004 I was given the same role as Discovery Dock, negotiating and placing large Sub-Contract orders whilst finishing off those left over from the previous job. Again I was visiting site a couple of times a week. The groundworks, frame mechanical and electrical installations were all fairly straightforward but the many different types of cladding were a nightmare. So 2005 was as busy as ever. In the December we moved the regional office from Langley to one floor in a Slough office block. No longer my own office, but a desk in an open plan environment. Once I got used to it, it was great. I had a lot of involvement with the office move, both sorting and archiving vast amounts of files at the old office, and setting up the new place.

Towards the end of 2005, I decided I would retire at the end of the following year. This coincided with the company winning an office building in Welwyn Garden City, and they asked me if I would be the contract QS. I would not be site based but retain  my desk in Slough and visit site as necessary. I would also have a junior assistant to help out on an ad hoc basis.

So for my last year at work, in 2006, I was back to where I was in 1972 when I first joined Henry Boot. The contract itself was a delight. Just me, the site manager Darren and a part time planner. Everything went as well as any job I've been involved with. The monthly meetings with senior management were a delight. The contract had not quite finished by the time I left the week before Christmas, and I handed the job over to another QS.

There was a party for me at the end of my last day, and many members of staff came in from other contracts. I had been in the industry for 43 years and there are not many QS's in there sixties. I had thoroughly enjoyed nearly all my time working for national contractors and I was involved with so many wonderful buildings. From the fountains in Nottingham City Square, to the Hilton Hotel refurbishment and the last three contracts at Shepherds where the pictures above say it all.

These are my notebooks from 1992 to 2006. They have been very useful in compiling this posting, but it's now time for them to go to the recycling centre (previous years have already gone). It will be sad to see them go, but I have kept my pocket diaries. One day those will go too.