Construction is a team sport

Seems the last construction project I worked on officially opened this week; now, Platform 37 back in the day, KGX1. I still find it fascinating how many people are needed to build a building- thousands? hundreds? I do not see this as something negative but as something worth thinking about. Most citizens associate buildings generally with the rock star architect who designed them, but behind them there are thousands or hundreds of people who committed hours to build the tangible world that we inhabit and shape our reality through the environment.

Three weeks ago I walked around that area, and the scaffolding was out; finally, everyone could see the building from up close. If you live in London, the change of the city is constant and inevitable, and KX is no doubt one of the examples of this and one of my favourite areas. Why? You are in the centre of London next to the wonderful British Library; then you head up to Granary Square where you can get a lesson on old London and the logistics of operating a city in the last centuries, and then you can go to the canal after seeing the cool students of Saint Martins and feel a bit old. The London canals are one, if not my favourite London feature; to one side from KX you head to Camden, to the other you can just walk to East up to the 2012 Olympic landmarks. Generally, I take that way, and I stop by the Bookshop Boat. From the canal or from the station, Platform 37 does not show its dimensions; also, from outside, it does not show how complex the structure was.

I have never worked on a project like that in my life, and I have been lucky enough to work in some great buildings in central London. Something that I knew when working on that project but I properly learned is that to deliver great projects, no matter what industry you work in, it's very simple; it's all about the team. I played team sports since I was a child, and now in my 40s I realised that it shaped my career more than some of my time at University. If you have a good team and you make the journey meaningful and fun, you are in for a good project.

Congratulations to every person who worked on the new platform 37 project and now gets the cool feeling of knowing the ins and outs of another London Landmark, and thanks to all the team that I worked with during those years. When I walked up that road, I could not stop thinking about all my Lendlease, now Bovis, colleagues, particularly a person who left us too soon; you all know who he was and how much he valued the team. Construction is still the cool industry in my opinion, because I think there is no greater flex than to say “I worked on that project”.