Ed Wootton, construction director, Galliford Try

My construction career started…

… when I did a HND at Preston Polytechnic, which included a placement year. I topped up my qualifications with a degree to make myself more employable. My current employer hired me at my university’s milkround interviews along with one other coursemate and we’re both still with the company.

You never forget your first project…

… and mine pushed me in at the deep end. I was on my HND placement year and told to build a sewage pumping main between Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes – a job worth £300,000, quite a sum in those days – and that they’d see me when I’d finished! On that project I learned a lot about the sheer intensity of a project, the focus on delivery and that you live and die by your reputation on site.

My first management roles in construction were…

… all about realising short-term goals – getting one project completed before moving on to the next. In my current role I take a broader perspective. I look after all the planning, pre-construction and construction stages of our projects, which can take several years. There’s a 50:50 split between the ‘managerial’ and ‘technical’ aspects and I love the variety this brings.

The biggest influence on my career…

… has been my manager, Bob Merriman. He’s been either my direct line manager or my manager-but-one since I started. I’ve learned a lot about how to operate from him by observing how he interacts with others. I spend a lot of time mentoring, as you get as much from mentoring as you do from formal training courses.

Construction has seen a lot of change…

… over the past decade. It’s now a customer-focused industry, with the emphasis on meeting a client brief rather than building what essentially is most economical for us. While construction has traditionally had a reputation for being confrontational, it’s now all about equal partnering. There’s now even more emphasis on teaching employees the value of safety on site and sustainability is increasingly important.

The hardest lessons I’ve learned…

… are firstly to have patience on a personal level – sometimes in your career things might not progress as quickly as you’d like but you’ll get there; secondly, to always look at a project from the other person’s perspective; and finally to be aware of the influence you have over projects.

To do well in construction…

… you have to thrive on change and the challenges this brings; if you like routines, don’t work in construction. The most important thing, however, is to enjoy your job – after all, if you don’t like what you do, what’s the point in doing it?

My top tips for graduates are to...

• Be prepared to spend time on the ground: you can’t manage effectively unless you’ve experienced some of the work your team does.
• Be enthusiastic: otherwise, you won’t be able to deliver.
• Be ready to learn from the day you arrive to the day you retire: part of the fun of construction is that you’re always finding out something new. There are many opportunities for training so take advantage of them. I’m learning even now by doing a business school diploma in applied management.