MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
thinking about possible career change options for a professional involved in the construction/development industry for over 15 years..
Do you / have you worked for the big PM companies (eg Atkins, Mace, TT etc) or perhaps smaller, what are your experiences of the role?
Just wondering about job satisfaction / stress levels / work life balance?
some of them would appear to be good employers but I wonder how it works and does it end up being quite pressured to succeed.
I like the idea of continuous learning, education and personal development and coaching that might happen in the bigger companies...
any thoughts appreciated- thanks in advance 🙂
I asked the same question a while back...
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/calling-project-managers-construction
cheers Mikey, I vaguely remember that one! will have a look again.
have you made any decisions or progress yourself towards this?
I wonder if you or anyone else knows about the chances of work-based learning, i.e. going into a company effectively as an apprentice or some general position again? is this ever done I wonder?
thanks
Manchester is going to kick off soon with the Chinese finance for the airport work. Construction is looking good. have you looked at any of the Institutes for help creating a career plan for yourself? http://www.ciob.org/, http://www.pmi.org/, http://www.apm.org.uk/
these sorts of institutes should advise you. Look at their training courses. Atkins, Balfour, McAlpines, Capita etc would like to see your plan and grasp of the path you want to take towards Chartership. If you are serious about it, this will help show it and may encourage them to take you seriously. On the job training doesnt stop once you have a degree or Cartership, nowadays CPD records are all part of it.
I haven't really done anything about it, other than telling my boss I would like to get involved in project management. We also discussed it would be a good service to offer as a company (architects).
I've been a bit too busy to do anything other than that.
I work for EC Harris and we are always looking for people of the right calibre
If you want to drop me a pm I would be happy to have a chat
I worked on a bunch of projects with EC Harris about 8-10 years ago. It involved modernisation of court rooms. Just sayin' 😀
Just thinking about doing this at the moment myself.
OP, what is your current skill set? Often much easier to migrate into this role rather than jump.
My experience is that although the opportunity for CPD is there, the pressure and workload is often prohibitive. I fully accept not all companies are made equal.
Good luck!
I work for EC Harris and we are always looking for people of the right calibre
If you want to drop me a pm I would be happy to have a chat "Ker Ching £1000 😉
£1000??- much more than that;-)
[Quote="redthunder"] - Member
I work for EC Harris and we are always looking for people of the right calibre
If you want to drop me a pm I would be happy to have a chat "
Ker Ching £1000
Current rates for recruitment is between 10 and 20% of salary. I doubt the OP is looking for 10k a year job.
cheers guys, good food for thought.
my current skills are architecture, but like others, I'm beggining to think I'm maybe in the wrong game! 😀 not necessarily for financial reasons, just speed of personal development, which I know is a big part down to myself too...
PopLarkin, I'll give you a pm tomorrow and would be good to talk briefly at some point.
From what I see at the moment schemes are getting fewer and fewer as we depend on government investment which is being cut all the time. This means there is a lot of pressure to cut costs but staff still to pay.
If you can find something not so dependant on government funding things may be slightly different.
Might be a good idea to think about what sort of projects you want to work on, and target your prospective employers that way.
For example, at the moment I'm working on a lot of education and blue light projects, amongst other local authority stuff - I come across Mace, F&G and Capita a lot. EC Harris and T&T not so much, but they are strong in the retail sector, and EC Harris are doing a lot of good work in the energy sector.
Also a good route into PM for you might be to choose a multi-discipline consultant and start on their architecture team before moving across to PM. Capita or F&G would be good for this.
Oh and if you want some proper money, have you thought about joining a main contractor as a D&B manager? 😉