Insights
Twenty years of UK fit-out delivery. Programme management, risk, career, and the realities of working inside complex environments. Published here and on LinkedIn.
STORIES
The career arc, told in pieces.
18 May 2026
2 min read
At 30 I ended up in A&E convinced I was having a heart attack. It was a panic attack. What sustained pressure does to a person who does not acknowledge it - and what I have done about it since.
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15 May 2026
2 min read
I walked into what I thought was a meeting room at the Royal Courts of Justice. It was a court. Full of judges. Briefing a panel of judges on a works programme is a different kind of meeting - and the moment that took me from 'foreign labourer in 2005' to 'champagne in the main hall in 2014'.
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13 May 2026
2 min read
After Lincoln's Inn my Project Director asked if I wanted to join him on a new project. The Shard. I started as Site Manager. Then a second scope came in and my PD asked if I could run it as PM. The moment the PM title became official - and the morning six climbers appeared on the outside of the building.
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11 May 2026
2 min read
My first project as site manager for Paragon. A 17th-century Grade II listed barristers' chambers. Scaffold to the roofline. Stone so thick it took a week to core drill through. And one Saturday, Poirot was filming in the courtyard.
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7 May 2026
2 min read
Kings Cross. 2008. A £40m site. The SM pulled me aside and asked if I could run the night shift. Twelve hours. Large team. I was a handyman. I had never supervised anyone in my life. I said yes.
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5 May 2026
2 min read
I arrived in London with no contacts, no construction experience, and no English worth speaking. Twenty years later I had managed projects at The Shard, the Science Museum, and the Royal Courts of Justice. None of it was planned.
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Notes
Short observations on UK fit-out PM work.
25 February 2026
1 min read
Early in your PM career, it's easy to judge progress by deliverables sent, meetings attended, tasks closed. That's not how senior PMs think. Senior PMs track risk movement.
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18 February 2026
1 min read
A programme can look solid and still be fundamentally weak. The ten failures I have seen repeatedly across fit-out delivery.
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11 February 2026
1 min read
Good subcontractors don't always lose tenders because they lack experience. They lose them because they don't reduce uncertainty.
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4 February 2026
1 min read
During my career I have seen many project managers running sites without ever opening their programme between progress meetings. Most project risk is created before site starts.
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7 January 2026
1 min read
A final account meeting. The Employer's QS reducing the variation account by over £30,000 because the variations were not supported by written instructions. The work had been done. Nobody had written it down.
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