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The company’s head of construction and facilities talks to Dave Rogers about this project, this acquisition, and why the industry wants security to thrive.
“You can take the woman out of Chatham, but you can’t take the Chatham out of the woman. “
Jo Streeten talks about her recent struggles with young people in the North London community where she lives. Her home, as well as others, have recently been destroyed and she has had enough. “We suffered an attack of consolidated eggs along the way. I discovered walking down the street, shouting all kinds of language.
She thought for a moment, before adding, “You feel that kind of worry in London. Do you pass out and confront them? Or do you worry if they have a knife or an older brother?But they were young. We discovered them at the local rearmament store. We said to the merchant, “Could you at least avoid promoting the eggs?”
If you think this refers to who can’t stand fools, then you’re right. Streeten went to the best school – Rochester Grammar, an all-girls school in her local Kent that she didn’t like very much – she spent 18 years at the BBC and now runs around 4,500 more people after being appointed Aecom’s managing director of buildings and locations for Europe and India 18 months ago.
He’s been with Aecom almost as long as he’s been with Beeb now. “I saw a show when I was 14, Behind the Scenes on the BBC, and it seemed like a job to do. “
She says she was never going to be an actress, singer or presenter, perhaps the most common idea people have of what it means to work at the BBC, so instead, she charted another path to get there. “I was on a task The fair and the BBC had a stand. I asked, “What do I want to do with the paintings in BBC projects?And they said, “Get a degree in electrical and electronic engineering. “I enjoyed maths and physics and dutifully that’s what I did at King’s College.
Later, he saw a job offer at the BBC, implemented and, coincidentally, the user who had passed him his card at the job fair on the interview panel. I said, ‘You told me to do this race and I did. . ‘ She was given the task and at the age of 21 she became a task engineer.
She admits that she may have bumped into other acquaintances during her time there, but she doesn’t actually know who. “My daughter is one of those people who knows how to spot other outstanding people,” she says. “I wouldn’t notice. “
His time at the BBC is explained through the Portland Place project, the construction of the headquarters just off Regent Street called Broadcasting House and which houses the BBC’s news and journalism departments. He appears every night on the 10 p. m. show. news program.
After joining the BBC’s asset division, he led the refurbishment of Broadcasting House and helped organise the architecture festival alongside Broadgate developers Stuart Lipton and Ricky Burdett, who would go on to be the lead architectural advisor at the London 2012 Olympic Games. They eventually settled on a design through the vanquished Sir Richard MacCormac, whose architects MJP defeated the arguments of Will Alsop, Eric Parry and Stanton Williams.
MacCormac resigned when prices soared and Sheppard Robson was hired to complete the task officially opened by Queen in 2013.
Streeten will change his role from consumer to that of consultant. “I was at that age where I thought if I don’t do it now, I never will. That was in 2007.
“Everything in the world looked good,” he laughs. She left to give birth to her second child, a boy, and returned from maternity leave six weeks later to meet the world in the midst of a financial crisis.
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The company he left the BBC for called Savant, an assignment manager and position representative who had about 60 other people in London and whom Streeten had known from his years on assignment at Broadcasting House. She joined us, she says, because she was curious about a new challenge.
“I was motivated through attractive projects and people. They would have been more engaging projects with the BBC doing things that I know about, so I was very interested and intrigued by seeing all that plethora.
He adds: “Having noticed both sides, I think you get more freedom and variety on the board side. There’s a wide diversity that I find interesting.
Savant, which has a strong presence in Europe, acquired in 2009 through Aecom, one of several acquisitions made by the American company at the time, the most important being Davis Langdon.
Streeten worked on the Davis Langdon deal as part of a team conducting due diligence on the company a few months earlier.
“There’s a lot of excitement,” he says of the acquisition. This is a complicated acquisition for Aecom. [Davis Langdon] is a very popular brand, so it’s painful to acquire. I believe the belief that this nameless Aecom had taken over this gem.
What has been the effect of this agreement?” Well, there are a lot more paid consulting firms on the market than there used to be,” he says deadpan, referring to the number of corporations like Alinea, which is now owned by Turner
“I think it retained a lot of Davis Langdon’s clever legacy, but it needs to be presented as Aecom. We still have other people from that era, but the difference is in the diversity of activities across the industry. We are a large-scale organization.
I think you get more freedom and variety on the board. There’s a lot of diversity there that interests me.
Aecom bought Davis Langdon to expand into the British market, in London, and Streeten is scrapping some of the paintings it plans in the capital: 1 Under Shaft, the Eric Parry Tower that will be the tallest in the City; the progression from British lands to Canadian waters; the new Moorfields Eye Hospital, Oriel, in Camden; Parry’s project in Salisbury Square, the so-called Justice Quarter, next to Fleet Street; and the renovation of the city’s Barbican Center.
The company also works annually on the Serpentine Pavilion project, which showcases the talent of architects who have never worked in the UK before. Its first version, 2008, was designed by Frank Gehry.
“You have to have a fondness for the built environment and a fondness for its transformative effect,” he says. But he admits, “The higher I go, the less I get into the main points of projects. “
Despite such an impressive list of jobs and the fact that 850 workers are located in the capital, London is rarely an Aecom banker as many might believe. ” On large projects in London there are demanding situations: affordability, planning and other issues. “I don’t have a problem, but it’s not the expansion engine we’re seeing now. “
On the other hand, work in the field of fitness and, in particular, in defense is on the rise. “We can adapt according to the belief of the market. We will continue to see investments in defence and I don’t foresee that changing, given the geopolitical situation. “
Streeten doesn’t expect a massive expansion this year, given the upcoming general election, and corporations will already have an additional workload until 2025. “I think it will be moderate for the rest of this year,” he adds. In other people in the industry, we want safety [at work]. “
Speaking of which, Aecom is working with Laing O’Rourke on HS2 station at Birmingham Interchange and, like most, Streeten is exasperated by the government’s cuts and adjustments to the project. “We were disappointed that it was stopped. “
In addition to elections in the UK, it also faces an election in India, where the company has 700 employees and offices in Delhi and Mumbai. He first arrived in the country earlier this year and says the business and generation sectors have great potential there.
He was shocked by Delhi’s pollution, but said: “Here [in the UK] we are renovating the infrastructure that is already expanded, but over there they can expand greener infrastructure from scratch. “
To attract other people to the industry, we need [job] certainty
He travels several times a month and also visits the firm’s offices in Spain, Germany and Poland. “Everything in life is about broadening your horizons,” he adds.
She says she wants to do more to attract women to the industry, but says things are improving. One of the unintended outcomes of Covid, she adds, has been the way it has replaced attitudes toward caring for boys and men.
“I’ve noticed that men with small children come to the painting completely damaged because they’ve gotten up four times a night. It’s not just a women’s problem.
“Covid has done a lot of bad things still, before, if you were a man and you left early to pick up other people, other people might just say, ‘What time do you call this?’, however, everything changed.
Like many people, he is worried about the fate of some companies that have been under management for the past year. ” It all comes down to one certainty: we want more of them to succeed. “
Inflation is a big challenge for entrepreneurs, he adds. “They bought at the price. “
Aecom’s recent annual survey of London’s top contractors found that many are struggling to fill their order books as the festival intensifies in the face of falling workloads.
But Streeten believes the reports she and others learned about the 2007 and 2008 financial crisis deserve to be very useful to the industry. “During those six weeks [of maternity leave], the world came crashing down. But financial markets aren’t that damaged. down as they were then.
“Rumors abound and are concerning, depending on the contractors or experts on a project. But we have learned a lot in this era [2007-08] and the key is not to react to short-term panic, but rather to react. to a long-term vision.
Jo Streeten, a self-confessed news junkie, tries to watch the 10 p. m. show. news on the BBC every night. ” I can still feel the pain of price engineering workouts [when I log in],” he jokes. For me, the 10 p. m. they’re a punctuation mark in my day. “
His other wonderful punctuation mark is a weekly swim in the ponds of Hampstead Heath. She goes there on a Saturday or Sunday morning in any weather. ” I love it, it clears your head,” she says.
She is joined by her 27-year-old daughter. It’s a magical place. There are times when there’s ice and you swim a little bit in it.
His daughter works in television while he believes his 15-year-old son will pursue a career in landscape architecture. “He likes plants,” she says. You look at his computer and, like any 15-year-old, you wonder what you’re finding. . . But more commonly, it’s plant-based pornography. “
She ran the London Marathon in 2005 and her educational careers would take her from Broadcasting House to Kenwood House in Heath. She was once overtaken in a race by someone carrying a refrigerator on his back with the legend “A refrigerator too far” on his back. “It was absolutely demoralising,” he admits.
However, running runs in her family circle as her mother competed in the 1952 and 1956 Olympics. She ran the 80m hurdles but would have liked to be a top-tier jumper, but at the time there was no top-notch jumping coach in Bradford, where she grew up. up.
She then became an instructor while her father’s name was Tony Ward, who died in 2010, and she was an athletics administrator and the first press officer for British athletics in its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. He also wrote the autobiography of sprinter and Linford Christie, the 1992 Olympic 100-meter champion.
Pauline, her mother, and Ward never married, although, Streeten says, they had a years-long relationship “of which I am the result. “He’s a lovely man, I had enough contact with him.
As a former Olympian, her mother invited her to attend the final of her same event at London 2012. Needless to say, for a woman born in 1934, the discounted price of £30 or £40 per ticket is still strangely high.
“I don’t pay for that,” she tells her daughter. I told him that the bills were worth their weight in gold. She went with my daughter anyway. She was impressed.
As CLC publishes its latest semi-annual report, Carl Brown speaks to Mark Reynolds about the group’s achievements to date and its long-term plans.
The co-chairman of the world’s largest architecture firm tells Tom Lowe about the firm’s adventure over the past few turbulent years and why a survival consultant for architects writes.
The Canadian engineering facilities giant, owner of Atkins and Faithful Gould, has completely replaced its call in a bid to put the upheavals of the past behind it and focus on growth. The group’s British chairman explains to Carl Brown his success strategy
Public capital spending on undergraduate education last year at any time since Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme gained momentum 17 years ago. In the context of the Construction election, Joey Gardiner asks what can be done to prevent our schools from deteriorating further.
The proposed 2025 energy regulations focus on photovoltaics and installations, rather than buildings aimed at reducing emissions. Will this be enough to help the UK meet its 2050 target?
High-profile collapses and staggering losses at Laing O’Rourke are causing corporations to be what awaits them in 2024.