Learner Profile 4
Jim, General Manager and Chief Executive of Severn River Crossing PLC
In 1979 Jim left his home town of Dublin to work
overseas for John Laing Construction. The background to this big step
in his career was not, however, a higher education degree. Well, not yet,
at any rate. Jim had completed his secondary schooling in Ireland and
achieved his Leaving Certificate at the age of 17, which was then the
equivalent to A Levels in the UK. He had gone into University in Dublin
to train as a teacher but he dropped out. “I think I was too young
and immature at that stage in my life to make that decision. In many ways
it was probably simply an expectation that I would go. My father was a
civil servant, my mother a teacher, and it seemed that University was
the natural thing to do.”
So, Jim went into the world of work and spent some time working for a
building company and then for Laing’s in Ireland. He didn’t
have a special interest in construction and the job with Laings’s,
initially as a wages clerk, came about by chance through personal contacts.
However, as time went by he was developing an interest in becoming a Quantity
Surveyor but, “In those days employers didn’t have a particularly
enlightened approach to letting employees get into any sort of structured
training,” Jim points out. “So I began by taking a part-time
evening course over a couple of years in Land Surveying at a College of
Technology in Dublin. After this I began a series of correspondence courses
towards achieving the Chartered Institute of Building qualification and
I got the Intermediate Award in ’73. In fact I didn’t manage
to resume this course until ’88 and then qualified with the Advanced
Award in 1990 though distance learning. This gave me the equivalent of
a degree and full corporate membership of the Chartered Institute of Builders.”
Jim found trying to balance his part-time study with work quite hard going but he made it and, some 25 years after leaving school, Jim got his higher education qualification, by now, with Laing’s financial support and active encouragement. Along the way he also qualified in Quality Assurance Auditing through in-house training with his employer! Getting to this point wasn’t all straightforward however. “You have to bear in mind that a lot of my early attempts to find the right courses for me relied a lot on word-of-mouth from workmates and colleagues. I never really had any structured guidance from anyone and, looking back, this would have been really helpful to me.” From his long experience, Jim is a firm believer in the value of getting the right advice to help people decide on the best way to go for learning for their careers.
However, this wasn’t the last leg of Jim’s learning journey. As work with Laing’s continued through the 1990’s, he was developing an interest in Law, seeing it as complementary to Quantity Surveying and Laing’s supported his completion of another part-time diploma course in Law at the University of the West of England (UWE), this time two days a week with some more distance learning. Many might find this way of studying daunting but Jim has only positive things to say about his experience, apart, perhaps, from more time to do it in! “It was fantastic at UWE. You only had to pick up the phone any time to get prompt support and we met as a learning group once every six weeks.”
Finally, in 1998, Jim left Laing’s to become the General Manager and Chief Executive of the Severn River Crossing Company, so it’s Jim who’s in charge when you cross either of the Severn Bridges on your way in or out of Wales from the South West!
The story doesn’t finish here. Jim now encourages other to learn to develop themselves and their careers through day release and distance learning. The Company is fully committed to this and is creative in trying to see most learning opportunities as potentially relevant to its staff’s work roles, so many of the workforce are busy following a really wide variety of educational courses..
A final word from Jim –“I would like to see education providers paying more visits to companies to spread the word on what can be offered, as well as listening to what companies say they need, and I’d like it if more employers gave their workers the chance for structured training. My message to any young person setting out would be ‘Knock on your employer’s door – learning at whatever level is a really worthwhile experience. Keep up your commitment to yourself and, most importantly, get hold of whatever advice and guidance is going!’ ”
Contact Details
Steve Furness
University of the West of England
