How You Can Flip the Script & Turn Redundancy Into Your Most Powerful Career Move Yet!

In this episode of the Thrive in Construction Podcast, we're delighted to host Marc Bradfield, a seasoned expert in design management and a dynamic leader in construction innovation. Marc shares his extensive journey from his days as a site engineer to his pivotal role as head of design for Bouygues residential team, discussing the challenges and triumphs of managing complex design processes across multifaceted teams.

Dive into Marc's transformative insights on the essential blend of technical skills and human interaction in project management. He reflects on the pivotal moments that reshaped his approach to leadership—moving from command-driven tactics to fostering collaboration and understanding among his teams. We also  discussed how redundancy can actually be a great opportunity!

Join us as Marc unravels the importance of communication in overcoming project hurdles, his strategies for effective team management, and his visionary take on future industry trends. This episode is not just a study on advancing construction practices but also a testament to the evolving role of empathy and strategic thinking in leading successful projects.

🕒 Timeline:
[00:00] Introduction to Marc Bradfield and his influence in construction
[05:00] Journey from engineering to leadership in design management
[15:00] Lessons on communication and team dynamics
[25:00] Marc's approach to overcoming industry challenges
[35:00] Predictions for future trends in construction and design

Marc’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbradfield/

Bureau Veritas Group: https://group.bureauveritas.com/ 

Follow Me: https://darrenevans.komi.io.

👉 Tune into this inspiring conversation on the Thrive in Construction Podcast. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insightful discussions on the future of construction.

🔗Stay updated and follow our channel for the latest in construction innovation and leadership insights.

sustainability in construction, embodied carbon, being made redundant, redundancy, redundancy opportunities, construction industry uk, working in construction, importance of effective communication in the workplace, communication,  embodied carbon, being made redundant, career change, career path change, opportunities after losing a job, flip the script, being made redundant in construction career, sustainability in construction, 

#constructionindustry #sustainabilityinconstruction #embodiedcarbon #netzeroemissions #netzero #sustainabilityjourney #redundancy #beingmaderedundant #redundant #careerpath #careerchange #communicationintheworkplace

Transcript

Darren Evans: 0:00

So advice that you would give then to people that find themselves in a position where they've not got a job anymore don't panic, Sit back and reflect on the role, the position, whatever you were doing with the business that you were working with and maybe have a thing.

Marc Bradfield: 0:15

think about things like what did you enjoy and like about that role, what were you good at in that role? And then, most importantly, in terms of looking forward for whatever direction you take, what can you bring value to a business? You know there's lots of things that you might enjoy or like, but there's certain elements of that that will bring value to a business. So have a think about that before you move on. To me it's potentially an opportunity.

Marc Bradfield: 0:49

Sometimes and I've heard you know other people say this sometimes it's a good kick up the backside for people. You know people become too comfortable. You know the concept I always used to say was you know where the stationary cupboard is. One of the biggest problems working in any business is not necessarily the big technical challenges you've got, it's just knowing where to find someone to help you with the IT or to find a pen or whatever it might be, and you just become very, very comfortable and almost a piece of the furniture. And I've heard so many people say actually that was an opportunity for me just to break away, reconsider what I was, what I was doing, and you know, set or fine-tune, or set a different, a different course. It's definitely not a scenario to to panic.

Darren Evans: 1:39

Hello and welcome to the Thriving Construction Podcast. Today we have got Mark Bradfield with us. Mark, great to have you here. Darren, thank you very much for having me here. So, mark, we've known each other for probably about a year, maybe two years pushing it but your influence in the construction industry is far deeper than me knowing you. You're saying that. So for those people that are watching and listening, could you just give an outline of what it is that you do and and where you're at at the moment?

Marc Bradfield: 2:10

of course. So my my most recent role was as head of design for WIG on the residential team, and what that essentially means is that I was functionally responsible for the design management and information management teams. So an interesting challenge, as much a technical role as a people person type role, which was an interesting development in my career over the whatever it is in 25 years plus, and have you always had a love or an affiliation for design?

Marc Bradfield: 2:45

I started my life, my working life, my career, with a master's in engineering. Okay, it was a multidisciplinary master's covered civil engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, and I special specialized in civil and when I left university I actually was closer to the production and delivery side of it. So I started. My journey was essentially, in a nutshell, started off as a site engineer on site, moved to something called a sub-agent, site manager, project manager, so. So I wasn't following a purely technical design management route from from the outset, and I'm sure we can. We can talk about how I then jumped and maneuvered into into a slightly different stream of work.

Darren Evans: 3:42

So of all, of those different disciplines that you've covered, what elements of those really stand out to you? Enough to say, yeah, I love doing that. That's where my passion is.

Marc Bradfield: 3:52

It's. It's interesting because you, you kind of you reflect on what you've learned through your career. So the sort of production, the site management and project management role. I only really realize now, all these years later, that it is as much about people as anything else. And I think if I'd, if I'd known back then what I've learned, particularly in the last few years, it would make delivering the project much more straightforward. And it said it's a really important thing to me um, the kind of how, how to interact with people and the kind of the dynamics of a, of a team, how would it make it different?

Darren Evans: 4:42

and what would you do differently back then with the knowledge that you have now? I?

Marc Bradfield: 4:47

think I mean being being very blunt. I thought that it was all about command and insisting that people do things um, your way, my way of doing it, and I suppose I kind of I've kind of learned that the hard way, that there's a much easier way. You can still be disciplined in your approach to things, but you don't have to be quite so rigid. The most important thing to me, I think that I've learned, is trying to consider things from the other person's perspective. You know, you don't just bowl in there and ball them out as such it is done. It may work, but the reality is there's a much easier route by trying to understand things from their perspective and learning from them, not being so arrogant that you think that you know everything.

Marc Bradfield: 5:41

The reason something may not have got done on time. You may well learn something if you start to try and understand it from the other person's perspective. Now that's something. That's something that I didn't know and appreciate in the earlier part of my career and I think, if you'd ask the younger me back in that day, the reason that I then had a change in my career direction, which was to jump to the design management side. I did that because I enjoyed the technical side as much as anything else, but I have learnt over the last few years.

Darren Evans: 6:19

Those people skills as such. When you say that things would be easier had you understood those people skills or understood that seeing something from someone else's point of view, what specifically do you mean by things being easier? Because that's kind of a general terminology. I'm wondering what specifically would be easier.

Marc Bradfield: 6:40

Well, if I walked into this room now and I said, darren, you haven't done this on time, get it done. Why is it not done? And you're you're sitting there saying, but this happened, but we had a problem with such and such. I need to understand that and learn from that. Um, to be able to I guess it's another part of of of being a a manager is to to help the team remove obstacles. To me, that's an important part of management. It's not just telling people this must be done at this point, it's helping them, or, firstly, understanding what the obstacles are to them being successful and delivering a high quality output, delivering a high quality output but secondly, just helping them to remove those, those obstacles, or even removing those obstacles obstacles yourself so that they can do the best job that they can that's interesting because I think that people know what needs to be done, so the fact that you're telling them that it's not been done and it's not been done quick enough, they already know that.

Darren Evans: 7:43

Yeah, so you're already giving them information that they know absolutely.

Marc Bradfield: 7:46

So super frustrating for a, for you know, for a start off.

Darren Evans: 7:50

And then the second element to that is, if you think right, let's figure out where the obstacles are and I can try and help remove those obstacles, or let's figure out where the friction is and I can help reduce the friction, as opposed to coming in saying I've got some friction, I'm going to add to this problem and that's really going to help us both.

Marc Bradfield: 8:09

That's really interesting that you've, absolutely absolutely, and so you know I think I was saying there that. So I moved from the kind of project management direction I went to the technical side. I mean, actually reflecting back, I took a slight sort of step backwards in a way to move from project management. I then became a design coordinator and then started building back up through that kind of technical work stream, and maybe I didn't know this at the time, but much of that was because I was very new to the people management side of things and that was causing me a lot of frustrations as an individual.

Marc Bradfield: 8:50

Now you kind of roll forward to more recent times and the last role I was doing, whilst people were escalating technical issues. To me, mark, there's an issue with X, y, xyz. Can you please take a look at that with your team? And whilst it may portray itself as a technical issue, a technical problem, very, very often nine times out of ten I'd go as far as saying that the root cause of that problem was communication and communication linked in with with people skills. Yes, it is a technical problem, but if people had communicated in the right way, had tried to understand it from other people, other stakeholders, other parts of the design team, other parts of the delivery team. We may never have had that problem in the first place, and I mean it's worth stopping and thinking for for anybody. Think about how the communication occurred between individuals. How were people engaging? How were people trying to really understand the problems from other people's perspectives? And I can guarantee communication and engagement with others will be quite high on that list it's interesting.

Darren Evans: 10:06

There, as you're speaking, I'm reflecting on conversations I've had with inspiring people. You're one of them, but the but, the, the conversations that I've had have all been around. It doesn't make any difference how you see it, it's how someone else sees it. So it's very easy for people to say well, from my perspective is this and you need to listen to me because this is my perspective but that is one approach and you can take that. But the highest level of communication, of collaboration, of working, of leadership is to say let's park what I think and how I see it completely until I understand how you see it. Yeah. Then, when I understand fully how you see it, then I can bring my perspective into it and see the best way forward. But that best way forward begins to really be clear because I understand the way that you see it first of all. Yeah, not the other way around yeah, absolutely.

Marc Bradfield: 11:02

Before you go bowling in with with your own views, understand it from the other person's perspective and work with them to gain your understanding.

Darren Evans: 11:12

Before you start saying, no, I don't agree, just take a little bit of a deeper look so what happened then in your life or in your professional world for you to have that aha moment because you weren't born with that, and I don't. Nobody is right. No one's born with this ability or desire to say let me see it from your point of view first, and then I'll had?

Marc Bradfield: 11:35

where was the aha moment for you? So that's a that's a really tricky one. I mean, just how do you get to that point? There's a lot through experience and there's a lot through working in maybe more difficult environments in terms of where people have very different ways of thinking, and you've got to appreciate that not everybody thinks in the same way. People have cultural differences, and I think you need to. I mean, I can say to anybody do think about how you communicate, do think about thinking it from their point of view, but but you, you've really got to get out there and and and start start experiencing that so are you saying that the aha moment for you came as a result of a of a pain point or as a frustration?

Marc Bradfield: 12:20

I. I rapidly got to a point where I realised that there was kind of 20% of the people that you were dealing with had caused you essentially 80% of the grief, trying to consider it as a as a as an engineering problem, um, but to start thinking of it as a as a kind of a more human people type problem, um. I don't know whether it was necessarily a kind of ta-da light bulb moment, but it's something certainly I've, I've, I've come to come to realize.

Darren Evans: 13:01

It's interesting that you um mention about an engineering problem. Where it's a, it's something that you know exactly how it's going to operate under certain circumstances. I know that if I've got a screwdriver and I've got a screw, that if I do this with it then it's going to behave in this way. But people aren't like that, right no, and and, and you know.

Marc Bradfield: 13:22

Then another thing there's um, there's a, there's a concept, and I don't know who it came from, but they talk about the tribes of construction.

Darren Evans: 13:32

OK.

Marc Bradfield: 13:39

And essentially what I've sort of taken from that. They deal with so many different from a very, very creative person, perhaps from an architectural or interior design point of view, and they're coming from one perspective right the way through to a highly technical analytical person, technical analytical person, and then the full spectrum in between that, all the different. You know the amazing variety of careers and disciplines in the industry commercial, legal. We're doing much more with data and you know you're starting to see data scientists, data engineers stepping into our world. I always thought with design management you're kind of sitting in the middle of this, trying to be a translator between people Like a UN negotiator, almost yeah.

Darren Evans: 14:38

Yes, deal with conflicting opinions, conflicting agendas.

Marc Bradfield: 14:44

Yeah, with conflicting opinions, conflicting agendas, yeah, it's easy to. I think there's some misconceptions over what a design manager is and even I think in my career, this concept of the design and build procurement route, where you had a design manager, is, relatively speaking, in the history of construction, um, something um of a of a new concept, um, and I think that the first, the first project that that I was involved in, that was, was design and build. I think it was a. Uh, yeah, it was a college and, I'll be honest, we didn't really understand what design and build meant. We knew that somebody needed to be a design manager, but we weren't quite sure what, the, what, the, what the job description was, and so there was.

Marc Bradfield: 15:35

I think the misconception for me is often that that that a design manager is a designer. That is one route. People, some more often than not, come from an architectural background, but my, my career in design management wasn't. It was via the project management route, and I think it's about finding a balance. Design manager, to me, is not a designer, they're a project manager of the design. The other kind of issue is that, within that construction environment and going back to those tribes of construction and all the creatives and the highly technical people. I think in any industry, technical people sometimes struggle with the softer, tacit whatever you want to call them skills, and that's they're now going full circle back to this, this communication. So to me, for a design manager, you've got to find a really good balance between the technical knowledge and often also those, those, those softer skills of communication, engagement, building relationships with people to actually make it a success as such.

Darren Evans: 16:54

I totally agree with that.

Darren Evans: 16:55

I think that one of the things that I've seen, not just during my time in the consultancy business that I've got, but also just observing generally, is you generally have someone that's very good at their job so take it from a technical point of view, very, very good at their job and they'll want to get promoted or they'll want to progress in their job, and so the root of that is to manage people.

Darren Evans: 17:22

So managing people is a different skill set, or leading people is a different skill set often like almost definitely, certainly at the time than the skill and the job that you're doing, that you're very good at, that you want to progress with, yeah, and so then there's this huge jump of they are really really good at their job, they know it really well in and out, upside down. They're the person to go to great. We're going to take that person and we're going to put them and we're going to make them a leader or a manager and we're not going to give them any training to understand of how to deal with other people's emotions, how to deal with your emotions when they're against other people's emotions, how to see something from their point of view, because you didn't need to do that when you were really really good at your job.

Marc Bradfield: 18:09

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting one because it's not just with construction. But I've got some good friends that work in the IT industry and to me it's quite unfortunate that the normal climbing the ladder for people is you may start off being really really good technical and then there's this kind of jump that suddenly you become a manager or a leader and you need that, but you kind of have to do it to go up the grades. But why should we work in a world where you cannot just have people that are purely technical? You know, not everybody wants to to to be that manager and leader, and I think that's something that needs to. It needs to change. There needs to be to be roots, to be sort of uber technical, and then there's the, the technical, with a good mix and a good balance of those of those softer skills.

Darren Evans: 19:03

I also think that there are people in the in the industry that shouldn't manage, not that they don't want to, but actually they shouldn't because, yes, it's. It's nothing that they're good at and they've got no desire to be good, but there seems to be a need, doesn't it?

Marc Bradfield: 19:18

there's? You know, there just seems to be this sort of natural, natural progression. Um and uh, I struggle with that. It's one of the it's one of the things. I think there are some forward thinking people. I know I've had those conversations with those people, but it's something that we, we, we need to, we need to change.

Darren Evans: 19:36

So let's go back now to um early years. For you, it seems like the construction industry, or construction, is important to you. Yes, um seems like you've always been in the area for uh for for your career. But, um, as you reflect back, where do you think that that started for you? If we go pre-university as such so I'm talking way back, way back childhood.

Marc Bradfield: 20:04

So I always had a kind of a I don't know what you'd call it, but uh, but uh, but a practical interest as a child in interestingly disassembling things right um to, to try and understand, um, how they, how they worked so when you're saying disassembling, you mean carefully taking it apart, or you're about bashing things?

Marc Bradfield: 20:23

no, carefully taking it apart so so I had a relative that worked in an office where they were changing their their phones believe it or not and she used to turn up as the old style of phone used to turn up with one of those each, each sort of weekend when she was visiting, and I'd kind of scurry off with it and I'd take it to pieces and try and understand how it kind of worked as such so sorry to jump in, but the old star phone you're not about the one where you had to put your finger in and go like exactly, exactly so a good mix of kind of mechanical with electronic as as well, um, and, and that was great because, um, those phones weren't needed anymore.

Marc Bradfield: 21:05

The only problem was that kind of then started to delve into other things which were actually needed and I did like to disassemble them and, being really honest, I very often couldn't put them back together again, but it was, it was a, it was a learning experience.

Darren Evans: 21:23

Did you just take them and disassemble them without letting anyone know or asking permission? Yes, you did Great. What type of things did?

Marc Bradfield: 21:30

you pick up and take apart that you shouldn't have done. I'm trying to think what it was, but I did get a little bit of an electric shock on something Still plugged in, was it? So maybe we should, yes, yes, so maybe we should move on, but it's really difficult to think back where my brain was at and whether I I'm not sure whether I ever saw myself where I am now in terms of the construction world.

Darren Evans: 21:59

I think back that young, it would have been impossible to do that.

Marc Bradfield: 22:02

It's really difficult you know you've got to make you start rolling forward. For example, my eldest daughter, she's 17. And she's having to make decisions now without all the information. You know you haven't experienced the working world and I can try and help, but I do really really feel for trying to make these decisions. I think for me I have a vague recollection of actually what I wanted to do is to be a plumber. Okay, but my, my father came from a very academic background. So I think there was me thinking I'd like to be a plumber, but there was a kind of a gentle guiding hand towards the degree route. What was your father's line of work? So he, ultimately, his sort of academic side was two law degrees, if I remember rightly, but he worked for a large petroleum company back in the day. But anyway, you know you kind of, you know how do you end up in places. There's a certain I've got an idea of what I want to do and there's a certain sort of invisible hand manoeuvring you in various directions.

Darren Evans: 23:15

So did your dad have a picture in his mind of what his son mark needed to do, and was he? I'm not sure it was no, I don't.

Marc Bradfield: 23:23

I don't know whether it's mark you must do this. I think it was just more a kind of maybe, um, I felt that it was a uh, an expectation to to go down that route, um, but but now when I look at it, I think we need to embrace the fact that there are so many different routes, particularly into our industry. I would not sit here and say that going down the academic degree route is the best way, because I don't think that. I don't think that.

Darren Evans: 24:07

I think you need that good balance of people that have worked from a more practical point of view and pull those two sets of thinking together. Good, so take us now to the point where you're at university, because you did go down the academic route. Yeah Right, you went to university.

Marc Bradfield: 24:17

I guess you did A-levels, I did Life at school good, bad, indifferent, oh yeah, all good, um, but interestingly when we, when I got to a level, I struggled like hell with maths, which is quite interesting when I was heading down the the engineering route as such. So I struggled through that a level, I got into exeter university. I struggled for four years predominantly with the maths side of things. I'll be honest, I struggle with it. Now. If, um, one of my kids comes with a maths problem, you will. You just if if they walked in here now, this seat would be empty. I would be busy with something else.

Marc Bradfield: 24:59

But I got there. I came out with a good degree, maybe to a certain extent. That's why I didn't go down the structural engineer type route as such. And, yeah, I'm sure I could have made something of that, but it would have been a lot of hard work with the me and getting my head around math. So perhaps that's why I went more more practical and went down the main contracting route and who did you have arrange you at that time?

Darren Evans: 25:26

that was influential from a encouraging, inspiring, supportive perspective.

Marc Bradfield: 25:35

I don't think the question of who, who, who inspires you. I'm not somebody that that that necessarily can pluck different names uh out and say this person, that person I know, I know later in my career I mean something over the last 10 years, and they would now come into the later part but I think there's so many people that that influence and inspire you day to day and they don't necessarily have to be some amazing podium speaker. There was something that I remember uh reading or hearing about and, um, it was the concept of a um, your own panel of experts or your personal board of directors, and the idea is that you assemble in your head a list of people that you've interacted with. They could be real people, they could be colleagues, they could be bosses, they could be fictional people, they could be somebody that does a podcast, whatever it might be, but the way that they deal with things things in good and bad ways um, when you have your own personal issue and you're trying to work through a problem at work, you essentially consult your uh panel of experts and think how would they have approached that? So you know, I've got, I've got from very almost within the first sort of six months of my career, a site manager that I worked with and he taught me the value of counting every penny.

Marc Bradfield: 27:10

You know looking after the pennies. I can remember him and it was a. It was a project in Chatham Historic Dock dockyard and I remember him. At the end of every day he would wander beneath the scaffold collecting the fixings that the the roofing guys had dropped, and he would. He would be demonstrating look boxes and boxes. Now multiply that across the entire job, multiply that across an entire business. You know that's, that's huge.

Marc Bradfield: 27:39

Um other things, you know, more recently somebody said to me keep doing what you're doing. And I think that's a great thing, because sometimes you know if you're a, a manager or a leader, you need to remind people. You don't need to just tell them that they're doing something slightly wrong, but actually sometimes you need to tell them what you're doing is right. So I've used that. I can think of another, an ops director that I've worked with that never would shy away from making tough decisions to ensure the success of the project. So that's kind of my idea of how you bring these people that have influenced you over time, and I guess I've been picking these people up and changing that kind of panel of experts over time.

Darren Evans: 28:31

I love that, the one that stands out to me that you've listed there is the thing that you're doing. Just keep doing it. If it's the right thing, it will always be the right thing. Keep doing it, even though you're not getting the outcome that you want at the moment. Yeah, just keep doing it. Yeah, because that's the right thing to do, absolutely, and sometimes we can be just focused on the outcome. That that causes us to hop and jump between the right thing, the wrong thing, the right thing and the wrong thing, because we're not getting the outcome as quick as we want it I think now there's a there's a kind of we've we've drawn into this habit of moving too quickly, changing too quickly.

Marc Bradfield: 29:07

We we implement something and if it hasn't worked, five minutes later we change to something else, rather than letting it run its course slightly and and learning and then slowly feeding, feeding back into it. It seems that the industry and the world is so fast moving at the time, people want to keep trying different directions, and I don't mean do something is wrong and just carry on. That's definitely what I don't mean, but it's taking the feedback and just incrementally changing whatever it is that you're you're working on, yeah, yeah.

Darren Evans: 29:42

I like that. So one of the things I think where that can show up is, um, in areas of, uh, when people lose their jobs. Yeah, I have been in a situation two times in my life where I was employed by somebody and I had the conversation that said you, you can no longer work here because of various reasons. Yeah, and there's a period that you go through, after you've lost your job of how do I, how do I deal with this, what does it look like? How do I find my place in another organization that sets me alight'd just like to get your views on that, because I'm sure over the years, you have been very redundant also.

Marc Bradfield: 30:25

So it's something that I've experienced recently. It's something that in some ways it's difficult for me to comment, because I think after that, after that, that that situation, speaking to other people, I've been relatively I'll call it lucky, but I'll change that slightly when we, when we move on you feel lucky because I haven't.

Marc Bradfield: 30:48

I haven't had it happened. This this time was the the first time. Okay, that that, that it happened. And then I'm talking to other people, both in the built environment and beyond, and it's something that you're very, very likely to go through in your career. I think that, going back to you know I'm lucky. Well, actually, sometimes it's an opportunity and I, you know, I think I need to say that now everyone's situation is going to be different, but I think one thing you need to do is give yourself a minute now you may have, depending on that situation that you're in. You may have days or weeks to do that, or you might have a longer period of time, but whatever that period of time is, sit back and reflect on the role, the position, whatever you were doing with the business that you were working with, and maybe have a thing. Think about things like what did you enjoy and like about that role, what were you good at in that role? And then, most importantly, in terms of looking forward, for whatever direction you take, what can you bring value to a business? You know there's lots of things that you might you might enjoy or like, but there's certain elements of that that will bring value to a business. So have a think about that before you move on. To me it's potentially an opportunity.

Marc Bradfield: 32:21

Sometimes and I've heard, you know other other people say this sometimes it's a, it's a good kick up the backside for people. You know people become too comfortable. You know the concept I always used to say was you, you know where the stationary cupboard is. One of the biggest problems working in any in any business is is not necessarily the big technical challenges you've got, it's just knowing where to um, to to find someone to help you with the it or to find a pen or whatever, whatever it might be, and you just become very, very comfortable and almost a piece of the furniture. And I've heard so many people say actually that was an opportunity for me just to break away, reconsider what I was, what I was doing and you know, set um or fine-tune or set a different, a different course. It's definitely not a scenario to to panic as such.

Darren Evans: 33:13

So advice that you would give then to people that find themselves in a position where they've not got a job anymore, first of all. So three pieces of advice.

Marc Bradfield: 33:22

First of all, don't panic, don't panic, depending on your situation, whether it's you know you, you you need to get yourself into a new role in days or weeks, or whatever that might be. Just give yourself a bit of time to have a think about what you liked, what you were good at and, most importantly, what you can bring value to, to a business.

Marc Bradfield: 33:45

It's just an opportunity to adjust your course or make a more significant change, um, but see it as a as an opportunity. I think we've got to face that. The world that we work in, in terms of the built environment, is highly cyclical and perhaps I mean, if I look through my 25 years plus you, you, you can see that, we can, we can all see that. But interestingly, the last, I think, um the last few years, it's been more erratic, more pronounced, more uncertain. I don't think that's necessarily going to change quickly.

Darren Evans: 34:25

How do you see the coming years? What do you think the industry will be like from, say, in between 2025 to 2030?

Marc Bradfield: 34:34

I think 2024 is going to be an interesting one. This is not my, my sort of expertise as such, and I've always been someone that has tried to be cautious about jumping on the bandwagon of you know, problems and doom and everything like that, because I think it's, I think it's far from that. I think 2024 will be potentially flat for some people in terms of depending on what sector they're working in, but there are definitely parts of the whole built environment sectors that are likely to flourish. That's just just my opinion. There's an opportunity within 2024 to think about all the challenges that we face going forward. There's a great need to respond to the building safety act and the legislation associated with that. There's linked in with that to an extent, there's a need to look at quality. Linked in with that, competence is is a is a significant issue and then with that, we have discussions about um, about carbon, um, and I and I find I find that that quite interesting.

Marc Bradfield: 35:49

You know, thinking back to what we were talking about earlier, about the, the highly technical people, and sometimes I've struggled that carbon, the carbon discussions can become too centered on data and we get a little bit carried away on that data and actually not necessarily getting to the root of of changing things. You know we need to understand the parameters, the data. We have lots of conversations about operational carbon, very much focused, particularly if you're working with local authorities in terms of that. It's easy to translate operational carbon into something that the general public understand, ie, cheaper bills. As such, the area that I believe we struggle with the most and you probably tell me better on this but is embodied carbon.

Marc Bradfield: 36:44

I don't think we're, as an industry, thinking about it as enough, and why is that? I think we're struggling to find a way to measure that data or a benchmark for that data and agree something. So I think there's a need. I think there's a need actually just to just to get out there and do the right thing and not necessarily get hung up on the fact that I've got to meet some standard, but actually just do something to to improve that yeah, I would agree.

Darren Evans: 37:12

I mean there are things being done about it. I think if you were to go back to when I first set my consultancy up back in 2007, yeah, absolutely no one was doing anything about that back then, even back further to when I was at school. When you were at school now, you know, I think the closest as a child I remember was there was a, a cartoon character called Captain Planet. I don't know if you remember him, but he, um, he was a cartoon character that came around and tried to persuade people to be more responsible with how they used water and where they threw rubbish and and so on and so on. So that was probably the closest that it has ever been. I think that we are the most progressed that we've ever been right now.

Darren Evans: 37:55

But totally agree with what you're saying is there is no common agreeable standard that says that this is what good looks like and that's from a measurable point of view, and what I mean by that is items that should be measured and items that shouldn't be measured and the depth of their measurement. There is no common denominator on that. I think that that will change. I am actively speaking with people around that, around what that could look like and because I think it's, I think as I think it's important I mean.

Marc Bradfield: 38:28

Something that I was was reflecting on recently was um, you remember I said about through 2024 and there being um certain sectors, that actually we could see some great stuff. If you know, everything comes into alignment. And one that I've been particularly interested in over the last few months is the build to rent sector, because that links in with a lot of the things I mentioned before. Quality is an interesting aspect of that, because in the build to rent sector, essentially the renters will vote with their feet if, um, if the quality is not up to up to standard. So essentially, if you're someone providing that, an investor, in that, you're putting your money where your mouth is.

Marc Bradfield: 39:14

But the carbon concept to me, step away from the built environment. We're all very good at kind of creating an echo chamber of discussions and I think sometimes we don't think about the people beyond the built environment. It's very easy to look at something like LinkedIn and think everybody's having the right conversations, but when you look, those people are all built environment people. What about the general public? And I have a sort of a notion that people, the general public, wants to do the right thing. You know they hear everything about net zero and carbon climate emergency. They want to do the right thing. I would say the majority do. They just don't know where to begin. Something like um build to rent. There is an opportunity to, to allow people to buy into a more sustainable life in a project where a more sustainable life in a project where, yes, operational carbon, but embodied carbon have been considered. So we're kind of helping those people to to actually make a difference by buying into that, into that market totally agree.

Darren Evans: 40:30

I think, specifically with embodied carbon, it's quite difficult for anyone outside of the industry to actually understand why that makes a difference, how they can find out what good is anyway. Yeah Well, maybe even who cares right, who cares? So you can maybe affect the who cares with the operational carbon by linking it to pounds and pence when you're spending on your, on your bills and and so on and so on that. So I think you can bridge that meaning gap there, because I think that money currently is the currency that everyone understands in terms of a standard. We understand if I'm getting five pounds, I understand that that's nowhere near as good as if I'm getting a thousand pounds. We understand that.

Darren Evans: 41:18

But embodied carbon do I understand that? If I'm outside of the industry, or even in the industry, I don't understand it, to be honest. Yeah, thinking about it, the conversations that we've had with clients and that's one of the things that I am working on within my company and also with other organizations is how can we, how can we make it mean something to someone without it feeling like you're grabbing them around the neck and choking them, because I don't think it needs to be that. Hopefully, this podcast may be an area for people to get some understanding and a perspective, but it's going to be, I believe, a blend of things that will enable the person to be able to answer the question of why should I care? Yeah, about embodied carbon. Yeah, those are my thoughts.

Marc Bradfield: 42:10

I don't know if that was helpful for you or that absolutely, I think we're, we're, I think we're sort of in some ways coming into alignment on the, on the, on the, on the thought process. It's just, it's just fascinated me in terms of putting yourself in the, in the mindset of the, the customers of us as a, of an industry and um, trying to help them to, to understand and not get dragged into our own kind of echo chamber of um of thoughts which I think aligns very much with what you're saying about these lessons that you've learned as you've gone through your career of.

Darren Evans: 42:45

Early on in your career, it was all about what I thought and this is the way that it should be done, because this is right.

Darren Evans: 42:51

But now it's about well, let me understand how you see it and let me understand and get into your head and then I can help you, along with me, go in a direction that we want to go in, which is progressive, which which is the whole thing around the climate emergency, the whole thing around decarbonization, be of operational or, you know, whatever it looks like it's. How do we understand what other people see, feel, believe, yeah, what's important to them, and how can we align the the right thing with that, with that way of seeing the world? Absolutely, I think then we can start to to move forward there. So I think that's really interesting. So what have you been involved with recently that stood out to you? What have you really loved being a part of that? You think this is so progressive, or this is so forward thinking, or this is so exciting. We never would have done this 10 years ago, five years ago, 20 years ago I think it's some of the, the conversations that are occurring in the industry now.

Marc Bradfield: 44:00

There's a lot of of of challenges and I think, as I said before we the start of my career, things may never have didn't change very, very rapidly. You know I turned up and why we do. Why do we do it this way, mark? Because we've always done it this way. Now can you get on with your job, please, and do it the way that we were always doing it? Admittedly, I then went through a period of time of accepting that, after, after a number of experiences, um, but now I kind of see that we have so much almost been bombarded with a need to change. I think there's a really exciting time ahead to deal with that, but being cautious as well. At the same time, it's um, you know we we've we've talked about, to an extent, that the challenges of the, of the of the markets at the moment, um, I don't think that's gonna that's gonna go away, so we need to to to be dealing with that. We've talked about carbon and the challenges that that come that.

Marc Bradfield: 45:03

The other big discussion is AI, and I find that fascinating because I think sometimes people are in different camps. Some people kind of think, oh, this is crazy, this is not going to happen. And I think that's because the AI industry naturally kind of almost oversells itself and looks a bit further into the future as a kind of this is what it looks like, but we're kind of saying to you, this is what it, how it is now, and that either scares people or says this isn't just going to happen. But for me, the reality is that tools of AI are out there. They're developing me. Everybody's trying to learn about what that means is that tools of AI are out there, they're developing me. Everybody's trying to learn about what that means. If you think it's not coming, it's already here. Essentially, from a very simple point of view we talked about echo chambers. You look at something like LinkedIn and the algorithms it uses, and every time you look at something like LinkedIn and the algorithms it uses, and every time you look at somebody that's got an interest in carbon and you like the post and you repost something and suddenly everybody's talking about carbon, you think, wow, everybody is talking about. So you know, people are people are interacting with with.

Marc Bradfield: 46:22

The thing for me is that we need to understand what this can do for us in terms of helping with the efficiencies of what are very often very through necessity, through margins, very lean teams on site. How can we help them? But, thinking about competence and things, we don't want to just assume that ai is going to solve all the problems. People should be able to understand how to put together that project, that building, deliver it or that design in the traditional means. They need to have that understanding and they need to understand the risks that come with AI. But it does make for exciting times ahead. You know, looking beyond, you know 2025. And I think, for the first time in my career, I feel that things have got to change. If people, if organisations, aren't considering and aren't responding to everything around this, there are lots of other organizations that will move in and take and take that forward. So and I and I I think that's really, that's really great in terms of moving forward and change for the industry.

Darren Evans: 47:38

Do you think that there will be that industry disruptor that we've seen, maybe in the tv and film industry? Well, we used to go down to hmv to get the records and the cds and the cassettes, and I don't think hmv are doing that well anymore no, I I definitely think the industry will change.

Marc Bradfield: 47:59

I think there's been a lot of, over the years, concepts that have come our way and people. They've sort of come in and they've gone out and nothing's changed. But there's too much going on in the industry for it not to be disrupted and changed good.

Darren Evans: 48:16

well, one of the things that I know, that um hampers change is a belief in a false concept. So I I think that that's a really good segue into the demolition zone. Are you ready to go? I am ready. Let's do it and welcome back into the demolition zone. Mark, you have built this. Should we say rectilinear tower Sounds good to me, perfect For those people that are listening. Very blue on the top but multicoloured elsewhere, and it looks like it's on a couple of stilts there.

Marc Bradfield: 48:57

But what does it represent? Able to work in an open and truly collaborative way, with trust and in a non-adversarial fashion. I think that there's huge value and benefits to applying that, and it's something that does occur. I have seen and we need to.

Darren Evans: 49:23

We need to embrace it so the traditional way that the construction industry operates is a very kind of closed room. Yeah, you're a competitor of ours. You don't work with us. You're not in our industry, you don't work with us. We've got all the secrets and we're hanging on to them, because this is how we stay profitable, this is how the business stays viable and this is the best way for us to construct. That's what you're saying happens at the moment.

Marc Bradfield: 49:51

And I have yet to come up with an alternative word, but we have used the word collaborate and I think pretty much every discussion that you enter into, anybody, at some point somebody will mention collaborate. It's a popular word. It is it is a popular word and we need to think of something slightly different. But but I think it's become a little bit of a um, a bit of a, a buzzword, a sales gimmick as such, and we need to think of the concept of what does truly collaborative mean and being open um, not just within your own organization, but from a sort of an inter organizational way. I mean, you summed it up perfectly in terms of people keep these, these things really close to to, to, to their chest.

Marc Bradfield: 50:38

My view is there is so much going on in our industry that we need to share and discuss those problems with other fields, other other experts and actually thinking about it, not just within the kind of built environment you know there's. There's opportunities people talk about. There's a lot of talk about standardisation, modern methods of construction, all of these concepts, but it's very infrequent that I come across somebody from the manufacturing world that's kind of infiltrated our built environment world and it makes no sense to me that we don't have that as such. So inter-organisational discussions to solve these problems, not just within the built environment. It's the same with trust really thinking about what does trust mean when you're dealing with people? In terms of adversarial, the industry I entered was very adversarial. It has come a very long way in in my view, but it still has a way to go. We're still. We're still closing ourselves behind these doors, etc. Etc. So I think this is saying there is something that can be done different. It is a myth, it does happen.

Darren Evans: 52:04

We just need to see more of it good, I like that, just as you were speaking there and thinking of an alternative word to collaborate. This may not be appropriate, I don't know, but I'm going to say it anyway. It would be co-create. Yeah, so like that. It takes more than one person to create a building right, more than one organization. Yeah, so you know, co-create is one of the words that popped in my head.

Marc Bradfield: 52:30

Yeah, and I think you know on that and where we've talked about the view of those outside the built environment and you know what it looks like looking into that and what it looks like looking into that. I always think that people don't see the blood, the sweat, the tears of all the different types of people that are needed to deliver a project. I still look at some of the incredible work that the various delivery teams that I've been involved with and I think how I scratch my head sometimes. How do we do that? And just think, not just the people on that site, but not just the consultants involved, but everybody. There are so many people involved, so co-create. They're all part of that, I guess good.

Darren Evans: 53:20

Well, if the word ever becomes popular, I'll give the glory to you. You can say that you came up with this word. Excellent, excellent, that's good. Well, mark, should we destroy?

Marc Bradfield: 53:32

the myth. Yes, and what I will say is right at the top here, this blue section, that, to me, represents the good stuff that's already happening. So the people that are working in a trusting and collaborative way or co-creating, as as such, um and non-adversarial so, so those people, we need to just carefully take them over here. And that's not representative, because I think there are a lot of people that just spread throughout the industry.

Marc Bradfield: 54:06

We need to take them and we need to look after that as a, as a concept, and work with those people. Some people are already doing it. Some people have the um, the, the, the capability to do it and maybe are held back for other reasons. But let's look after those people. That leaves us with the myth.

Darren Evans: 54:25

Shall, I Do the honours. So With a swipe of the left hand, everything falls down. Love that, and what's remaining is just the blue. Love that. Good Mark, is there anything that's in your mind at the moment that you think would be good for our listeners to know and understand, something that will help them to maybe become better, help them to appreciate more, help them to have a perspective, to do the things that they really want to do?

Marc Bradfield: 55:00

I'm interested if there's anything in your mind I think if people are looking um at this from outside of the industry that are considering a career within the built environment, it's it's very easy to to, to look at and to walk past a, a project and and see that collection of people they're putting putting that together. What I don't think is necessarily visible so much is all of the different opportunities that exist. I mentioned data. You know we're starting to see people like data scientists, data engineers getting involved. There's that whole world of ai. There's opportunities in commercial, legal again, me not being able to easily look at how it looks from the outsider, but I sometimes think that they don't see those opportunities that exist. So come and take a look and see what floats your boat.

Darren Evans: 55:53

Essentially that's a great invitation come and take a look, see what floats your boat. I love that good mark. It's been a real pleasure to have you here on the podcast today. I really appreciate your wisdom, your passion, passion, your perspective and your time. Thank you.

Marc Bradfield: 56:09

Thank you very much, darren. I've really enjoyed it as well, and particularly on the demolition zone. Thank you Great.

Darren Evans: 56:31

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