Lincoln's Inn and Poirot

Everything I knew came from Overbury's Cat B fit-out. This was a 17th-century Grade II listed barristers' chambers in one of the most historic legal buildings in London - 2 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, next to the Royal Courts of Justice.

My first project as site manager for Paragon. Scaffold to the roofline. Window restoration. Roof works. External drainage. A new plant room built inside underground bunkers. Core drilling through stone so thick it took a week to get through them. A new stone staircase. Incoming mains services - electricity, gas, water, sewage. An internal lift and an external lift - both installed inside a listed shell.

I was responsible for the basement, ground floor, external works, roof and both lifts. Almost everything on my list was territory I had not covered before.

I arrived at 7am and left at 7pm. I worked weekends. That is what facilities management means - you are on the tools or you are managing what is happening. No department to escalate to. No colleague to hand off to.

One Saturday I came in. The courtyard was full of equipment. An old car parked outside. Crew everywhere. They were filming Poirot.

I watched the actor come out between takes. I knew the series - my partner loved it so much I had bought her the complete DVD collection. Standing there in my site gear watching that, in a location that was hundreds of years old, it was one of those moments you do not plan and do not forget.

At the 12-month defect review I walked back through those chambers after the client had moved in. Red carpet. Restored fireplaces with their original surrounds. Sash windows with the green external timber shutters - the kind that have closed across that glass every evening since the 1680s. Cornicing and period detailing brought back properly. The whole thing felt clean and quietly expensive, but entirely of another century. Not a modern office. Not a fit-out. Something older than any of us. Rooms being used, properly, by the people they were built for.

I stood there and felt something I had not felt on a project before: genuine pride in what had been built.

The rule I have lived by since: as long as they keep you there, do not remove yourself. Stay in the difficult environment. Use it. Learn everything it has to offer before you move on.

That is how careers in construction actually move - not through CVs but through the reputation you build with people who are watching.

Be that person.

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