00:01 My name is Robin Oram my job title is head of Building Schools for the Future and I work for Sir Robert McAlpine. Well I head up Sir Robert’s education operation, it involves putting together some fairly complicated bids for Building Schools for the Future on the basis that win those bids it involves then looking after the operational side of the business and I have a, I think it’s fair to say a very deep knowledge of business, of business building of work winning that have given me the broad based experience to run the department that I do.
00:44 I never in a million years as a young boy thought that I would be doing what I’m doing now, it wasn’t until I left home that, to go to college that I really found my feet and began to believe that I could make something of myself. When I first left school I went and joined the Inland Revenue. It was an office bound job and because I was so keen on sport, so keen on being outside I really suit that job and I left and Swindon offered few opportunities in truth. It was suggested to me by a friend of the family that I might like to go and join a company called John Laing which I did.
01:30 In some respects I say now I was a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. I never thought I would get to the position that I now hold. I started out as being a very lowly paid trainee, it seemed that there was an opportunity in grasping it with both hands, but at the time it was quite frightening frankly. I was asked to do things that I wasn’t sure I could do, but thought, let’s give it a go, let’s see I can.
01:59 My father was in the RAF during the war and had a very, very tough war, my mother was a nurse through the war, they actually gave me two very, very important aspects, my father taught me the value that friendship brings in life and from that I think the value of integrity in relationships, my mother on the other hand taught me courage.
02:24 I left Swindon when I was 17 years of age, to go to work with this construction company and, I suppose that was really the transforming part of my life. I have over my career worked around the world, I’ve lived in and worked with my family in Hong Kong, in Australia, I’ve worked all over the United States I’ve worked in Russia. I had a stadium consultancy business and I was appointed by Wembley stadium to refurbish the old Wembley stadium to build their exhibition halls to refurbish the conference centre as a project manager and as a result of working with Wembley I was asked by Manchester United to go and help them develop their new ground.
03:16 And so I came through that work to become very knowledgeable about stadia. I was asked to go to Hong Kong where Hong Kong were building a stadium and they were having difficulty with it, who can come and help us sort out the problems, and I was asked to go and do that because I was known in the stadium building environment as someone that could help.
03:38 I’m not a risk taker I’m risk averse, I learn to take chances by understanding what failure would mean and once you come to terms with what failure will mean and normally failure is not that painful, you can then give all your energies to being successful not having to worry about not getting it right because if it doesn’t work for you, you know you can keep going, you can go somewhere else.
04:04
Robin Oram
Robin Oram
My name is Robin Oram my job title is head of Building Schools for the Future and I work for Sir Robert McAlpine. Well I head up Sir Robert’s education operation, it involves putting together some fairly complicated bids for Building Schools for the Future on the basis that win those bids it involves then looking after the operational side of the business and I have a, I think it’s fair to say a very deep knowledge of business, of business building of work winning that have given me the broad based experience to run the department that I do.
I never in a million years as a young boy thought that I would be doing what I’m doing now, it wasn’t until I left home that, to go to college that I really found my feet and began to believe that I could make something of myself. When I first left school I went and joined the Inland Revenue. It was an office bound job and because I was so keen on sport, so keen on being outside I really suit that job and I left and Swindon offered few opportunities in truth. It was suggested to me by a friend of the family that I might like to go and join a company called John Laing which I did.
In some respects I say now I was a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. I never thought I would get to the position that I now hold. I started out as being a very lowly paid trainee, it seemed that there was an opportunity in grasping it with both hands, but at the time it was quite frightening frankly. I was asked to do things that I wasn’t sure I could do, but thought, let’s give it a go, let’s see I can.
My father was in the RAF during the war and had a very, very tough war, my mother was a nurse through the war, they actually gave me two very, very important aspects, my father taught me the value that friendship brings in life and from that I think the value of integrity in relationships, my mother on the other hand taught me courage.
I left Swindon when I was 17 years of age, to go to work with this construction company and, I suppose that was really the transforming part of my life. I have over my career worked around the world, I’ve lived in and worked with my family in Hong Kong, in Australia, I’ve worked all over the United States I’ve worked in Russia. I had a stadium consultancy business and I was appointed by Wembley stadium to refurbish the old Wembley stadium to build their exhibition halls to refurbish the conference centre as a project manager and as a result of working with Wembley I was asked by Manchester United to go and help them develop their new ground.
And so I came through that work to become very knowledgeable about stadia. I was asked to go to Hong Kong where Hong Kong were building a stadium and they were having difficulty with it, who can come and help us sort out the problems, and I was asked to go and do that because I was known in the stadium building environment as someone that could help.
I’m not a risk taker I’m risk averse, I learn to take chances by understanding what failure would mean and once you come to terms with what failure will mean and normally failure is not that painful, you can then give all your energies to being successful not having to worry about not getting it right because if it doesn’t work for you, you know you can keep going, you can go somewhere else.
Robin Oram is Head of Building Schools for the Future. Despite describing himself as "a kid from the wrong side of the tracks", Robin has worked his way up from trainee within a construction company to project managing the refurbishment of some of the most famous stadiums in the world.
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