How a chain boy, a golf handicap, a Gold Medal and a few unforgettable characters shaped my path in construction and leadership team coaching.

Round about now, fifty years ago, I joined the construction industry. I’d just left school at sixteen with an unimpressive, small collection of qualifications – the best of which was O Level Art. I didn’t have a career plan, I simply knew I wasn’t going into shipbuilding or down a coal mine; the most common industries in mid‑’70s North-East England.

Two weeks after leaving school, I was playing golf with a bloke who offered me a job as a trainee civil engineer. I asked, “What’s one of them?” He told me it was noisy, dirty, didn’t pay much, though it was outdoors and you got things like roads and sewers built. That invitation took me to the Whitley Bay Coastal Interceptor Sewer project, part of a big plan to clean up the River Tyne, and into a career I’m still in half a century later.

These are reflections from practice – the first half of my fifty years in construction – for me really, though you are welcome to join me.

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A clueless teenager underground

My first job wasn’t glamorous. I was a clueless teenager whose main tasks were to make tea for the Resident Engineer’s staff, get the chips and help the assistant resident engineers checking alignment of tunnels under construction, fifty meters below the busiest beach in the North East during the hottest summer on record. I was paid by the contractor, my pay slip said ‘chain boy’ and I earned £35 a week.

I was grateful for the job, though getting tea and chips was dull. Looking back now, I see something important in that beginning. Construction is not just delivered through strategies, risk registers and boards; it’s delivered by ordinary people doing ordinary tasks in difficult places.

My next job, again off the back of my golf handicap, was the opposite of dull. I was well and truly dropped right in it.

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Golf, Howdon and becoming unstoppable

A year into my construction career, I was interviewed for my second job. He asked me what I’d been doing in the last year and then what I did in my home time. I told him. He said I’d just improved my chances of getting the job by 75 per cent – he was a mad-keen golfer and my handicap was a fit.

Later that week I got a letter saying I was to start on the Howdon Sewage Treatment Works project the following Monday with the job title of Assistant Civil Engineer, salary £1,800 a year. That job title stayed in my personnel file after I graduated, became chartered and was running decent‑sized projects as Site Agent. Weird.

On the designated day, I turned up and reported to Mike, the senior engineer. He asked me about my experience to date and I told him. His response was straight: “Oh shit, I needed a setting out engineer with five years’ experience … and they send me you! Well, you better get on with it.” He gave me a big roll of drawings, a theodolite and a level, and said, “That’s your section over there.”

I spent the first few days trying to set the theodolite up over a nail while being hassled for lines and levels by a Norwegian general foreman called Harry. I was seventeen. Harry would become a big influence in my career. He was totally unstoppable. He said we were going to get that concrete pour before Christmas, and we did.

The pour started at 5am on Christmas Eve. It was 1 degree Celsius on a falling thermometer and the client’s staff told him to stop pouring. He ignored them and kept going. All precautions were planned in and a year’s worth of concrete tests could find no fault. Under Harry, I also became unstoppable.

The golfer who interviewed me ended up as CEO and I followed him up the ladder, at least some of the way. He was one of the best leaders I worked for. When I sit alongside leadership teams today, I still see echoes of Harry and that CEO – the mix of determination, directness and the space they gave me to grow, sometimes faster than felt comfortable.

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People say things that have a lasting effect

Marking my fifty years in the construction industry, I’ve been jotting down a few career recollections on LinkedIn. Part of the reason is to see what comes up for me. Another is to share what might be useful to others. One thing that keeps coming up is how much impact a few sentences can have.

When I was eighteen, the senior engineer I was working under said, and he wasn’t joking, “Dave, the trouble with you is you are so bloody enthusiastic. Wait till you’re my age and this industry has beaten the shit out of you; we’ll see how enthusiastic you are then!” He was twenty‑eight. I’m fifty years into it now, have had some testing times, though I’m just as enthusiastic – sometimes to the point of naivety, I think.

Around the same time, I made what felt like a huge setting‑out mistake. I felt sick to the stomach. I asked the same senior engineer what I should do about it. He said, “Go fess up to the project manager.” That was a big thing for me back then.

I knocked on the project manager’s door and went in. I told him what I’d done and that I was going to miss day‑release college the day after to sort it out. He said, “No, your college is the most important thing for you right now, sort it out when you come back.”

People say things that have a lasting effect. I still think about those two sentences – the slightly cynical prediction about my enthusiasm, and the calm prioritisation of my education over fixing today’s mistake. As a coach now, I’m very aware that senior leaders rarely know which comment will stay with someone for decades. It’s worth a thought.

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Taylor Woodrow: Work, study and ‘potential to reach the top’

At nineteen, I was moved to a site on ICI; my first time working away from home, in digs. I worked, I studied, I boxed, then went night‑clubbing most days of the week and went home at weekends.

Next, I looked after the last three months of a job in Wakefield covering for the sick‑leave agent – and apparently made a mess of it, not that I would know; I was still only nineteen.

After doing well in BTEC they sponsored me to do a Civil Engineering degree at Hatfield Poly. Someone told me I was the first to be sponsored by Taylor Woodrow; I don’t know if that was true but I had extra money on top of a full grant. I feel for the kids nowadays.

Having had three years on site, I was ahead of my fellow students in practical subjects but way, way behind on anything to do with maths. The remedial maths class was much too advanced for me. Three years of full‑time education later, I left with a pretty good degree. Not bad for a Geordie who left school at sixteen with O Level Art.

I returned to Taylor Woodrow and started working again two weeks later. My salary went up by a ridiculously small amount and I kicked off and got a bit more.

While at Taylor Woodrow, I progressed from bewildered setting‑out engineer to site project manager, got a degree and became a chartered civil engineer. Mostly living away from home, in a caravan plugged into the site cabins. It sounds horrendous but I loved it. I worked, studied and trained for triathlons. Lots of time to myself. Bliss.

Taylor Woodrow were great with me. They sent me on every course going and exposed me to steeply increasing responsibility. My bosses told me I had “potential to reach the top” and I came to expect it a bit too much for my own good. They sponsored me as a triathlete, racing throughout the UK and other parts of the world. They really cared for me and I for them. Still.

They backed me early; gave me responsibility and told me I’d could go far. It’s a powerful thing. It can also feed expectations that reality later needs to recalibrate. That recalibration came for me in 1991.

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Birse: a different kettle of fish

I was headhunted and joined Birse in 1991. Better car, much more money and a guarantee of working no more than twenty‑five miles from home – perfect, first child on the way. Birse were a ‘different kettle of fish’.

“None of that triathlon or golf stuff here.”
“We are paying you a lot, we expect you earn it.”
“Senior project manager, we’ll soon see what you’re made of.”

On my first day I asked for my “Birse tie” and was told, “We don’t do them.” I then asked for the “Birse Manual” and was told, “We don’t do them either, just get on with it.” So, I tried to – the Taylor Woodrow way, the only way I knew how. That way didn’t last long.

At that time, the Birse reputation was ‘if you can hack it here, you can hack it anywhere’. They were hard on everyone, but at the same time I suspected there was something special about them, about us. From what I could see, the Board were recruiting in their own mould – young, aggressive, competitive men, driven to succeed. Me.

As a project manager I was told, “You are the managing director of your project, you can do whatever you want though you will stand or fall by your project outcome.” I had considerable freedom and relatively little head office input or control. On my first project I literally shipped in a Type 1 subbase by barge from the north-west coast of Scotland, ten thousand tonnes at a time. No road haulage, top‑quality granite and much cheaper than the local limestone. I could never have done that via a company buying department. We didn’t have one and if we did, they would surely be looking at the bigger picture.

Those years were intense and formative. Autonomy plus pressure is a powerful teacher. It shows you where you’re strong, where you’re brittle and how you behave when nobody is holding your hand.

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The Lord Pilkington Prize

It’s 1993 and I’m doing my Project Evaluation and Development (PED) via the local university. Back then PED was a big step on the way to Chartered Builder status with the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB).

The lecturer failed my interim assignment. I protested, claiming it responded exactly and thoroughly to the brief. He was having none of it. I asked him to get it marked by the examining body. He did not respond, would not discuss it and stopped taking my calls.

I upped my game, determined to prove him wrong, and some months later I completed and submitted the whole thing – still uncertain about the interim assignment status. Sometime in 1994 I got a letter from the CIOB saying I had been awarded their Gold Medal, The Lord Pilkington Prize, for my PED. The letter included details of the presentation ceremony and said I could bring two guests. I couldn’t believe it and rang, wondering if I was just short‑listed. They confirmed I’d won it.

Word got round to my CEO and he called to congratulate me. He asked if I’d like him to attend the ceremony with me. Of course, I said yes. When we met there, he asked me if I thought he would “get in” – meaning a free ticket to chartered status. He wandered off to ask and returned clearly put out by the response – he had to study and go through the process like the rest of us.

On the day, I felt like a bit of a celeb; I’d won the CIOB’s top award, though my CEO seemed to have lost interest and left soon after the photographer had done his bit. A few months later two gold‑inscribed leather‑bound copies of my PED arrived in the post. One for me, the other for my college, and apparently a third copy was retained in the CIOB library.

I personally handed the copy to my lecturer. He was shocked: his failed student had won the top prize. I smiled a satisfied smile with full eye contact as we shook hands. For a while I thought it would turbo‑boost my career, though I suspect it increased the distance between me and some of my superiors – I think some want you to be qualified, but not too qualified. Too qualified can be threatening.

We don’t half meet some characters along the way – I suppose that includes me.

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Transformation and a growing passion for people

By 1995, the Birse Board realised things had to change and initiated a company‑wide ‘transformation’ programme. All staff were involved. The minimum was two days off site. I went for it big style and over a two‑year period clocked up dozens of days off site with external coaches.

I became one of the internal ‘coaches’, charged with ongoing improvement and keeping the change going once the external coaches left. This experience changed my career and my life – though not straightaway. I gradually became less interested in bricks, blocks and concrete and more interested, passionate even, in people and teams. It would take me another few years to fully engage that passion.

Looking back, those years were my apprenticeship in what I now do – even though what was called coaching then would not constitute professional coaching now. I began to see that the difference between projects that struggled and projects that thrived wasn’t only technical. It was also about how those at the top worked together, or not.

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Confidence, Wates and the step into my own practice

In 1998, I’m an internal coach at Birse while trying to hold down a very demanding operations role at a difficult time. I feel like I’m losing it. I’m travelling ninety‑seven miles each way to the office.

The external ‘coach’ tells me to “get a grip, you are now a coach and are 500% effective.” That doesn’t help; it makes me feel even more inadequate. And I am not 500% anything.

Sitting in my office, I’m stuck, my confidence shot. The phone rings and it’s my boss telling me I’m about to be promoted to a much bigger role. Less than enthusiastic I say, “Really!” That same afternoon I’m headhunted for an operations role I feel I can handle, or at least where I can regroup and regain some confidence. I take it and bolt.

Now managing director, the guy who said, “Senior project manager, we’ll soon see what you’re made of” the day I joined Birse seven years earlier rings me up and asks me to stay. But I’m gone – to Wates.

I do the operations role at Wates for about a year, get my act together and am doing OK‑ish. The MD finds out I have this change and coaching experience and asks me to head up the Wates Improving Construction Programme. This is a serious improvement effort and a major investment. It’s January 2000. He wants me to lead it and on my terms, so I go for it.

It isn’t easy, though it goes well and makes an impact on the business and some say on the industry too. It picks up industry awards and is cited by some as an Egan exemplar, even though it’s Wates‑designed and not modelled on his 1998 Rethinking Construction report. Sir James Wates says many years later that it was the foundation for the company’s future success and kindly acknowledges my role in leading it – his words are on the front page of my website.

I have a team of dedicated regional change managers enabling implementation across all Wates projects. After eighteen months, the numbers are impressive, indicating the programme has moved from initiative to new business‑as‑usual, and we decide to close it. All of my team are returned to operational roles at higher than previous levels and one question remains: what to do with me?

I ask them to make me redundant and the response is no. Shortly afterwards it comes to pass, though I’m retained as a consultant for a while. My boss, the MD, asks what I want to do and I say, “This – for the rest of the industry, for those willing to pay for it.”

The reality is my role is redundant so we part ways and I start my business – DSA Building Performance Ltd – on 31st July 2001, near on twenty‑five years ago. I have not stopped since.

That’s the first half of my fifty years. Next comes leadership team coaching, now twenty‑five years in.