Fred’s first contact with the construction industry was being sent as a temporary secretary to a Manchester construction project at the age of 18.
She loved it so much she stayed for over ten years!
Fred worked her way up from site secretary through document control (filing actual real paper drawings!), where she saw the earliest iterations of Building Information Modelling (BIM) start to emerge through the first digital construction management platforms. She progressed through roles in the planning and scheduling departments, working on multi-site projects for the Greater Manchester Police Authority and the Manchester Schools for the Future programs.
The opportunity came for Fred to really get her boots dirty came purely by chance. A new construction superintendent had joined the team, but was a little intimidated by the £20m 6-story in-situ concrete frame he was going to have to deliver. He sent his apologies the next day, didn’t turn up for work, Fred stepped into the gap, and the rest is history…
Safety is an integral part of construction site life, and accidents do happen. Fred has been on site when folks have suffered SIFs, she has paid into the collections when families aren’t going to be able to pay the bills on time because the breadwinner is laid up, and she has had to complete incident investigation reports and collected evidence when things didn’t go right.
She spent a lot of time talking safety with folks, finding out why they weren’t doing what they were supposed to and why. Fred’s understandings of safety are rooted in the ‘muck and bullets’ of the construction site. In places where high-energy hazards are plentiful, where it’s noisy, dusty or wet, and often loud. If she had $10 for every time someone had asked her to “come back in 5 mins!” to avoid getting into trouble for doing something a bit unsafe – often because there wasn’t really a safer way to do it - she’d have been driving a much nicer car…
This is a key part of the backstory to Straight Talk Safety. It’s why our offerings are real and authentic. It’s why it works.
What do all those letters after Fred’s name mean?
Over the years Fred attained professional status as:
- A Charted Construction Manager with the Chartered Institute of Building (MCIOB)
- A Chartered Building Engineer (C.BuildE) and member of the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (MCABE)
- An Associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (AMICE)
Fred has maintained her Professional Accreditations since she left industry and became an academic. Continuous Professional Development and adherence to the Codes of Practice that underpin the Royal Charters awarded to these organizations ensures Fred is always up to date with the latest industry developments, and also maintains the highest ethical and moral standards in her professional practice.
Construction Management Teaching
Fred moved into academia as a result of an economic recession, and she ended up teaching a lot of students who were ex-trades. This cohort had also left the industry due to lack of work, and were spending their time getting a professional qualification instead. Fred led the Foundation Degree (for students without formal qualifications) and Undergraduate Degrees in Construction Management at two different Universities, and has proudly graduated hundreds of students over the years. Early on, she realized there wasn’t a good Construction Management course textbook for students who hadn’t come from an academic background. There wasn’t something that set out the basics of the construction industry, it’s structure, procurement routes, use of contracts, as well as introducing scheduling, cost, quality and health and safety management.
So Fred decided to write it.
Introduction to Construction Management was first published by Routledge in 2015, with a Second Edition commissioned in 2022 due to strong sales. The second edition included new chapters on ethics, worker wellbeing and new technologies. This textbook now sells in over 20 countries around the world where it forms the core text for many undergraduate courses. It is also seen as an essential introduction for non-cognate students entering Post-Graduate education in construction-related fields.
Straight Talk Safety not only knows the construction industry…we wrote the book about it!