00:01 I’m Colin Hamilton and I’m an associate director with Interserve. Interserve is a very large company, construction and support service organisation, we employ around 50,000 people worldwide with a turnover of about 1.9 billion. And we’re building large, large prisons, we’re doing small fit outs for parts of an estate of different government departments, I work with the BBC for their estate, so my role really is to try and match, or really translate the information that I’m given from the client to get the very best team together to actually deliver the construction project, the design initially, the construction delivery and then the aftercare service and make sure that delivery is the very best that we can offer for that particular client.
00:49 And in recent times we’ve become part of the National Contractors Framework which is the framework set up by Partnerships for Schools to deliver primarily academies across the country but other educational facilities as well.
01:03 When I was probably 9 or 10 I constructed a railway layout that filled the entire loft of our of our house, so I took over the loft and created a platform and I built mountains and villages and huge amounts of track and layouts and everything else, and gave me a real insight into all sorts of different things about the laying out of a town and how things should run and the sequences that things need to be constructed together so that was probably the very early start of the mindset that I have. And that just translated into a wish to do things on a larger scale. Civil engineering seemed to be pretty much the largest scale you can do in terms of construction, large projects, large schemes, so I went into civil engineering.
01:57 My father was very hard working he worked in manufacturing and production of typewriters and the sort of, the work that was involved with pre computer technology so, that was an industry that was dying off and computers were taking over, but he was very hard working and gave me that sort of working ethos.
02:21 I did the standard O levels I did 10 or 11 O levels and then I did in the end 5 A levels but the single, the single sort of focus I had was on the engineering side so I did technical drawing and the sciences and I shied away from Art and the sort of literature side of things.
02:44 I actually didn’t go to university I went to Liverpool polytechnic as it was that was a course that was very useful for me because it was what was called a thin sandwich course at the time, giving me two opportunities to work in industry during that degree period.
03:01 I graduated in 1988 with a degree in civil engineering and have to say I’ve not done very much civil engineering since then, it’s been primarily in the building area.
03:12 I joined the company I’m currently with back in 88 and I liked the look of the company, I thought they had a really good ethos of working together and team work, and in terms of staying with the same business there was a very good training programme, a very clearly defined career path that I could see ahead of me, there was always opportunity for change within the business. I’ve done a whole variety of different roles, I’ve risen through the ranks from probably 88 to 2000 going from junior engineer to engineer, senior engineer, project manager, contracts manager and each of those roles brings a very different set of challenges.
03:55
Colin Hamilton
Colin Hamilton
I’m Colin Hamilton and I’m an associate director with Interserve. Interserve is a very large company, construction and support service organisation, we employ around 50,000 people worldwide with a turnover of about 1.9 billion. And we’re building large, large prisons, we’re doing small fit outs for parts of an estate of different government departments, I work with the BBC for their estate, so my role really is to try and match, or really translate the information that I’m given from the client to get the very best team together to actually deliver the construction project, the design initially, the construction delivery and then the aftercare service and make sure that delivery is the very best that we can offer for that particular client.
And in recent times we’ve become part of the National Contractors Framework which is the framework set up by Partnerships for Schools to deliver primarily academies across the country but other educational facilities as well.
When I was probably 9 or 10 I constructed a railway layout that filled the entire loft of our of our house, so I took over the loft and created a platform and I built mountains and villages and huge amounts of track and layouts and everything else, and gave me a real insight into all sorts of different things about the laying out of a town and how things should run and the sequences that things need to be constructed together so that was probably the very early start of the mindset that I have. And that just translated into a wish to do things on a larger scale. Civil engineering seemed to be pretty much the largest scale you can do in terms of construction, large projects, large schemes, so I went into civil engineering.
My father was very hard working he worked in manufacturing and production of typewriters and the sort of, the work that was involved with pre computer technology so, that was an industry that was dying off and computers were taking over, but he was very hard working and gave me that sort of working ethos.
I did the standard O levels I did 10 or 11 O levels and then I did in the end 5 A levels but the single, the single sort of focus I had was on the engineering side so I did technical drawing and the sciences and I shied away from Art and the sort of literature side of things.
I actually didn’t go to university I went to Liverpool polytechnic as it was that was a course that was very useful for me because it was what was called a thin sandwich course at the time, giving me two opportunities to work in industry during that degree period.
I graduated in 1988 with a degree in civil engineering and have to say I’ve not done very much civil engineering since then, it’s been primarily in the building area.
I joined the company I’m currently with back in 88 and I liked the look of the company, I thought they had a really good ethos of working together and team work, and in terms of staying with the same business there was a very good training programme, a very clearly defined career path that I could see ahead of me, there was always opportunity for change within the business. I’ve done a whole variety of different roles, I’ve risen through the ranks from probably 88 to 2000 going from junior engineer to engineer, senior engineer, project manager, contracts manager and each of those roles brings a very different set of challenges.
Colin Hamilton is an Associate Director with Interserve. He has been with the company since 1988, and risen through the ranks from Junior Engineer to Associate Director.
As part of icould's continuous development, we plan to include additional material from icould storytellers in the form of Blogs and other information which will enrich their filmed stories. So watch this space!
Comment guidelines, terms and conditions
If you think that a comment that has been posted is offensive, unsuitable or has in some other way breached our terms and conditions, please email us at comments@icould.org.uk with a link to the comment and your reasons for objecting to it. Please note icould reserves the right to remove any comments that are not appropriate.
