About

As a Regional Technical Manager and Business Development Manager I was part of the local business management team. This was where I was first exposed to a Profit and Loss account sheet and the wider commercial aspects of the industry. These experiences stood me in good stead for when I was given the opportunity to manage the company’s sand & gravel business in Essex.

As General Manager of ‘Essex Sand & Gravel’ I managed 12 members of staff operating 3 sand & gravel quarries with a combined annual turnover of some £5 million. Key responsibilities included:

• Profit and loss.
• Health Safety and Environment.
• Quality Control.
• Estates (planning) liaison.
• Business Development.

Throughout my career most of my positions had a substantial business development element within them but I fulfilled two roles specifically titled as a ‘Business Development Manager’.

The first involved a specialist aesthetic asphalt. Conventional asphalt mixes are only available in either black or ‘red’; Europave 2000 was manufactured using a translucent binder that allowed the material to be pigmented to virtually any colour. Given the overlap with the more conventional ‘red’ materials I was also tasked with overseeing this product group as well.

The second was related to Cold Mix Asphalts. These are a range of materials manufactured using, in this case, recycled asphalt pavement (RAP), cement or hydrated lime and a bitumen emulsion. The use of the bitumen emulsion allows the material to be mixed at ambient temperatures providing two significant environmental benefits: because the feedstock does not need to be dried and heated energy requirements are reduced and high proportions of RAP can be used. As with the aesthetic asphalt role this one developed into having oversight into other related areas, in this case all recycled or secondary aggregates including Incinerator Bottom Ash Aggregate (I.B.A.A.) and crushed glass.

Both roles involved research and development of the product itself; establishment of best practice for the manufacture, sales and installation of the product and preparation of the marketing collateral for each material.

I have spent more than half of my career working within a Technical department of one form or another.
I started off in the industry as a junior technician working in Dorset for Tarmac as part of a team that provided quality control on two asphalt plants, a limestone quarry and 3 sand & gravel operations. Once I had become sufficiently experienced, and had obtained my driving licence, I was repeatedly asked to provide cover for holidays and particularly busy periods in other parts of the business throughout the south east. During this relatively brief part of my career I was given the chance to experience a number of roles that many would not see during the whole of their career; one of the most memorable was in 1986 working on the southern taxiway at RAF Greenham Common near Newbury during the time of the Greenham Common ‘Women’s Peace Camp’ that was protesting against the the United States of America stationing nuclear cruise missiles on the site. After Greenham Common I was seconded to a surfacing gang working on the M2 & M20 in Kent before becoming their surfacing technician. From Kent I was promoted and became a Senior Technician at the company’s Central Laboratory at Shepperton to the west of London, which carried out physical, chemical & mechanical testing on the company’s products. Within a little over a year I found myself, at the age of 23, managing the Laboratory.

Wishing to return to a more operationally based technical role and also wanting to purchase my first house I jumped at the opportunity to work for Bardon Roadstone as a Technical Manager at their Bardon Hill Quarry in the Midlands. Although I held this title for a number of years the role was continually developing; starting off with responsibility for just the asphalt produced on the site (at some 1 million tonnes p.a.), by the time I moved on to my first Business Development role I was looking after the aggregate production (at some 3 million tonnes p.a.) and quality control on 6 small ‘urban’ plants producing a total of some 0.5 million tonnes of asphalt p.a. This was a particularly enjoyable period of my working life because I was specifically tasked with spending time around the quarry, on the asphalt plants or out on site.

After my second Business Development role I returned to the Technical role and became the Regional Technical Manager for the company’s South East business. In this capacity I was responsible for quality control, technical support internally and externally, setting and implementing technical policy, development and promotion of special products and management of the customer complaint system.

At that time the business consisted of 6 asphalt plants producing some 1.5 million tonnes of asphalt p.a. and 5 Railheads or ‘virtual quarries’ that handled a similar quantity of aggregates.

From this role I was asked if I would like to become one of three asphalt Specification Managers. As this role seemed to provide all the most enjoyable aspects of my previous career I jumped at the chance.

I currently hold Fellow status with the Institute of Sales Management (ISM) and the Institute of Asphalt Technology (IAT)and am a Member of the Chartered Institute of Highways Transportation (CIHT).

Although an active member in all three of these institutes the IAT is one that I am most significantly involved with. Having enrolled in 1991 as an ‘Associate’ my progression through the membership grades echoes my career development. During my membership of the IAT there are three landmarks that I am particularly proud of: the first was being appointed as Chair of the South East Branch in 2006 (I am still very active in the branch committee, currently holding the position of Vice Chair); the second was being awarded a Certificate of Merit for my efforts in re-invigorating the branch after member participation suffered during the recession and the third is being awarded Fellow status during 2019.

Membership of any professional institute provides an excellent opportunity to meet fellow professionals and to keep up to date with new developments in any given Industry, but the IAT has also provided me with opportunities to present at their ‘Technical Evenings’, Society of Chemical Industries (SCI) conferences and at Greenwich University. All of these opportunities are particularly important to me as they, as with my landmarks mentioned above, have all been conferred upon me by my peers and ‘betters’ within the industry.