Virginia Martin - Assistant Project Manager

You joined us last year as an Assistant Project Manager. Can you please describe your role?

The role as an assistant project manager consists in supporting the project managers and taking ownership of a project with support from the senior team. The daily work is very varied and spread between being in the office, on site and working from home. The workload is varied between meetings, quotations requests, interim certificates, instructions and fixing issues that may arise in order to smooth the building process.

What attracted you to Pick Everard?

Given that I worked in construction for many years and I had extensive experience on site, I have always been attracted to the role as a project manager and Pick Everard sounded like the perfect platform to achieve this. The career path development and the support to personally develop was a big plus.

What projects have you been involved in?

I’ve just started my path in Pick Everard and it’s quite exciting, I am leading the project for the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch consisting in replacing 276 windows which has a few accessibility constraints such as scaffold modifications required, new scaffold erections, access to rooms constraints so it requires quite a bit of organizational skills.

What are your goals for the next 5 years?

My goals will be to learn as much as I can so that I can became a successful senior project manager with knowledge in all the project management aspects as well as in hospital specific regulations.

What does a typical day look like for you?

First thing in the morning I have a meeting with all the team and the client to review progress and address any issues. As I am based on site, this is followed by calls to the contractor to review progress and plan for the day ahead, finishing off with a face to face meeting at the end of the day to review the day’s progress. I also run through my emails and admin tasks such as working on interim certificates, quotes required, access required, surveys and planning for the weekend.

How would people you work with describe your attitude and mindset?

I am always professional and polite, ready to help and eager to accomplish any task given.