The Night Shift

The SM pulled me aside one afternoon in 2008, on a £40m site in Kings Cross.

"We need someone to run the night shift. Twelve hours. Large team. Are you in?"

I was a handyman. I had never supervised anyone in my life.

I said yes.

Four weeks of 12-hour nights. Some nights the PM walked the site with me. Some nights the SM. It depended on who was there and what the night required. I took the briefing, walked the floors, and managed a large team of operatives through to the morning - not just watching them, working alongside them.

Nobody gave me a management course first. Nobody handed me a framework.

Early on the PM asked if I could sort somewhere to lay drawings on each floor. No budget. I built drawing benches from offcuts. They worked. Everyone used them. Years later when I was the PM, I asked my own handymen to do the same. I just showed up, figured it out, and delivered.

Some nights ran clean. Most did not.

Goods lift breaks down at 2am. Ten operatives waiting. Materials on the fourth floor that need to reach the ground. Time is running out.

You split the packages. Use the smaller lifts. Take the most critical items down the stairs and reprioritise everything else around what is left.

Some nights a few operatives did not turn up. You reshuffle the task list, resequence the work, put the right people on the highest-priority items, and deliver what you can.

There was no one to call. Security was the only other person in the building. You were in charge and that was it.

You make the decision. You push through the night. You give the full picture in the morning.

That night shift was the moment my name started to travel within Overbury. Over the next six years, every reference I gave came from that network.

Rio Tinto. International Maritime Organization. Conoco Phillips. Royal Bank of Scotland. DEFRA. BBC. Deloitte. Deutsche Bank. BP's Bedford Lakes campus.

Blue-chip clients. Occupied offices. Live buildings where disruption is not an option and every mistake is visible. These are not projects you get sent to if you cannot be trusted.

Labour to Handyman. Handyman to Site Supervisor. Site Supervisor to Assistant PM. All within one company. All word of mouth.

On every one of those projects I was reporting directly to a PM. I was not just doing their job - but I was watching a PM work with a client. Every conversation made under programme pressure. Not from behind a laptop - in the room, on the floor, in real time.

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

If you are a site operative or handyman reading this: the PM is always watching. Not to catch you out. To find out who is capable of the next thing.

Be that person.

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