Victoria Coach Station. July 2005.

I arrived in London at Victoria Coach Station in July 2005 after a 24-hour bus trip from Poland.

My colleague met me at the station. On the train I asked him: "You live in London, right?" He said "We were going to Sutton." I had no idea what that meant. Fifty minutes on the train and we still hadn't left the city. That journey was my first experience of how vast London actually is. Sutton to Zone 2 - Surrey, technically. I learned all of that later.

He was renting a flat with his wife and one other person. I rented the last small room inside it.

I had no construction experience. No contacts. Basic English. No laptop. For the first three weeks I looked for any work I could find - cafes, local restaurants, shops, warehouses. Whatever I could find. Money was tight.

Eventually I went to work with my colleague. He was an experienced steel fabricator and welder. I was cutting, grinding, moving steel, bolting, fixing, helping. I learned fast.

Then there were site deliveries. Senior guys in the front cab. Newbies - two of us crammed into the back of a white panel van, lying down among toolboxes and pieces of kit. Leather jackets over the van windows so we wouldn't be spotted travelling like that. Sometimes a 90-minute drive to Bracknell from South London on a metal floor.

On site we sometimes worked at height without a harness or other protection. Nobody mentioned it. That was just how it was in 2005.

The Irish owner was hard. He shouted. He swore. The language barrier made everything harder. From time to time I thought about quitting. But quitting to what, exactly?

So I continued.

Twenty years later I am a Chartered Member of the CIOB. I have managed projects at The Shard, the Science Museum, the Royal Courts of Justice compound, 125 Old Broad Street (the old London Stock Exchange tower) and a 19-floor government refurbishment. I have sat in front of clients presenting multi-million pound tenders and won them.

None of it was planned. All of it was built one step at a time.

Where you start does not decide where you finish.

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