As Sweet Projects scales and evolves, we were delighted to welcome Roy Andrade on board as Technical Director in November, bringing with him more than 35 years of experience in specialist industry construction.
In a newly-created senior role for our business, Roy’s remit includes ensuring consistency of approach around technical disciplines and developments, keeping an innovative eye on potential emerging solutions and continuing to evolve the technical capability of our teams and supply chain.
Here, Roy shares his initial experiences with Sweet Projects and explains what the first few months have looked like:
Coming into any new senior role is always interesting – you’re keen to get stuck in and get involved in the detail, however I’ve actually really enjoyed absorbing how different teams are already approaching things from a technical perspective.
I can genuinely say it’s been a truly welcoming induction, and great to get out on site seeing the Sweet Projects culture being played out in front of me. More on that later.
There are two key things that stood out to me, when I stepped over the threshold onto Sweet Projects sites across the country, and spoke first-hand to the teams on the ground.
Looking at the data
Firstly, is that every project is unique; we never design, build or create exactly the same thing twice. Processes adapt, external factors change, experiences develop as we grow, and here is our opportunity for continual improvement and to increase efficiency from our collective experience.
I relish this from a technical perspective – as my experience is relatively broad, from working on technically-complex projects, such as implementing a brand new ‘offshore’ engineering centre in India, or leading international multi-disciplinary design and engineering teams for semiconductor manufacturing plants, life science and research facilities.
I am here to use past experience to support in further evolving the technical capability across teams and projects, for all our key sectors of data, defence and energy, and beyond. Empowering teams to be the best they can be with the right tools, software and equipment to hand, to be as efficient as possible.
Technical competence and collaboration are key focus areas in my mind as we move through 2024.
As part of our technical strategy for 2024, we are building on our existing core competencies to enhance our technical strength and improve our engineering management effectiveness. This will be wide, reaching across the business, with a focus on understanding technical abilities and utilising data to avoid errors, which will improve project outcomes.
However, the challenge is the understanding and making use of the most appropriate datasets amongst the vast amount of data collected in modern day construction projects, and this is a recurring theme for many project organisations.
Therefore, we need closer departmental collaboration for a better understanding on how different pieces of technology and data fit together, so that we collect only the data that is truly useful for the construction phase, and then the later operation and maintenance stages. All too often data is collected “because we can”, and will never see the light of day again.
Therefore, our technical strategy also includes – in no small part – a large digital transformation plan incorporating significant design and engineering management process automation to improve efficiency and reduce manual errors in data collection and analysis.
People
Secondly, it is as much about empowering and coaching the teams around us, as it is about the technicalities of the engineering or construction on site. As part of my integration into the business, I’ve worked at listening to teams and individuals, identifying existing staff skills and potential areas of development.
My role is, to pull all of this learning together, ensure consistency and the cross-sharing of ideas and solutions, while bringing in new ideas and techniques from my background in consultancy businesses and Tier-1 contractors.
When speaking to Gareth before joining, it was abundantly clear that we shared a common desire to further build on the existing company infrastructure and phenomenal growth over the past four years. This is in respect to our design, engineering and construction capability, and importantly from a commercial aspect, for both our clients’ ability to succeed and grow, but also for Sweet Projects to thrive.
Our people are at the core of everything we do well, and therefore it is essential that we look after them in every possible way, from providing opportunities to develop their skills and knowledge, to ensuring we support their wellbeing. These two factors, together with personal career development, will ensure that our staff retention remains high, which in turn pays back with repeatable knowledge and hence increased operational efficiency.
Therefore, this year we will be implementing a skills evaluation matrix to identify existing competencies that sometimes stay hidden in large organisations, so that these skills can be quickly called for and leveraged as the need arises.
This will also help us identify and address skills gaps, through upskilling or recruitment to ensure we can demonstrate competence to our clients in the areas we work in and ensure that we comply with legislative requirements and so prove that we are able to do what we claim we can. In this world post Building Safety Act this becomes an essential part of doing business.
Communication
The final piece of the jigsaw is communication. The transparent sharing of our learnings and ways in which we can all do things better which, in my view, has a myriad of benefits to a growing organisation.
The ‘close knit’ culture I alluded to earlier is a powerful tool for breaking down silos that exist in most organisations. Once we can burrow through these silos, we can have a fully-inclusive fostering of collaboration across the business which, in turn, creates new relationships focused on building the company for a bright future in the ever-evolving and challenging industry.
I look forward to being able to share more elements of our technical journey with you all, as Sweet Projects continues to grow throughout 2024.
Feel free to email roy.andrade@sweet-projects.com, or ask any questions you may have.
