Commercial Manager
Bovis Lend Lease

David B

00:00:02 My name’s David B, and I’m a Commercial Manager. A Commercial Manager is basically someone who monitors costs and reports on it, and just generally just keeps an eye on it for the client.

00:01:45 To be honest, I didn’t like school, so I don’t think – I wasn’t a naughty child, I wasn’t, you know, I didn’t misbehave, I just liked to chat and I liked to just, you know, have a laugh and just generally didn’t know what – what it was all about. My grades weren’t good enough to get into a lot of courses, and at the time construction – they needed people in construction. I turned up at a – well basically I started at college doing full time at college in Construction. I did half a year, and then a company approached the college and basically said that they’d like me to start work with them, and do a day release HNC course. So I decided to do that, you know, I was going to get paid for – and doing college at the same time, so I thought yeah, you know, excellent. So I actually turned up, and I genuinely thought I was going to be a designer, or an architect. And this guy was like you know, you’re going to be a Quantity Surveyor. I said – Yeah OK, sure, you know. So we started, I just got on with it, you know, and I did college, and I did college for two or three years, obviously doing quantity surveying. And then I got to a point where I finished college, and I felt that I couldn’t – I wanted bigger and better things. I needed to challenge myself, and go to the next level I think, I felt that I’d reached as much as I could do at that point. I think at that stage it kind of became reality that I could actually get on to a degree course. So it came, it hit me that yeah, I can do this. And then all of a sudden it became yeah, target was – let’s get – let’s go to Uni. And that was it, that was it for me. So that’s what I did. Went to Manchester University, studied full time, great times, best time of my life probably for four years. I went to University and I knew, more than anybody else, ‘cause I’d already experienced the construction. So yeah, I felt that I was a bit more advanced than the other people.

00:02:06 The experience I got from doing my part time HNC was, you know, was incredible really, the fact that I turned up at University and I instantly knew what the Lecturer was talking about. It enabled me to concentrate on the things that I’d not, you know, had much experience in, you know, the harder Maths, the advanced Maths and the Sciences which they were – you know, they were touching on.

00:02:35 In five years’ time I’d like to still obviously be in construction. Obviously it’s climb up the ladder I guess. The next step is Senior Commercial Manager, and then obviously you go to Executive, and then you go to a Director and, you know, who knows. But I think kind of more long term thing, I’d like to go abroad. For example I think India at the moment, that’s up and coming, and China and all that – so whether or not I’d like – go over there and can obviously really kind of enjoy the time there and while it’s, you know, peak – at peak in the construction industry.

00:03:11 ENDS