What does job satisfaction mean to you? When your personal and professional worlds align it can be a powerful combination.
I’m an architect and creating buildings to be proud of is what motivates me. I’ve accumulated experience across private practice and in the public sector becoming more focused on healthcare buildings as I’ve developed my career.
What does the National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) mean to me? Put it this way, when I saw the role I’m doing now advertised, which includes overseeing the construction of the NRC as one of NUH’s national capital programmes and a flagship for the New Hospital Programme, I knew I had to go for it. It’s such a prestigious project and significant initiative.
My sister was quite poorly growing up and needed rehabilitation. I learned early on about the power of effective rehabilitation to improve lives. On top of that, my partner is an Occupational Therapist and her experience informs my perspective daily. Both of these were factors shaping my awareness of the role of rehabilitation and, ultimately, influencing my thinking.
The NRC is something special. It’s an innovative, ambitious project with a striking purpose and clear benefit, not only for future patients but also for those with an interest in innovating in clinical rehabilitation and rehabilitation research. To be on the team means a lot.
My role right now is to get the project ready for construction. We’re blessed to have the site on the Stanford Hall Rehabilitation Estate which is the ideal setting, to have planning permission in place and to have excellent and really progressive designs. Now, once we have a contractor successfully procured, we can move to working with the appointed contractor to integrate their expertise in terms of finalising the designs and de-risking construction. Then it becomes all about buildability – and this, for me, is where it gets even more exciting.
Finding the right construction partner makes a massive difference to the end result of projects in my experience. When client and building contractor come together around common goals, the results can be outstanding. That’s what I want to achieve with the NRC – and the common goals will include net zero carbon, sustainability, innovation, research and creating a genuine centre of excellence.
I’m proud to be at the sharp end of running the selection process which will be purposeful and transparent. We’re looking forward to seeing the best of the industry shine through the framework selection process and, as was the case with the construction of the Defence facility on the Estate, to seeing the bidders’ emotional as well as technical response to the brief.
Rehabilitation matters to me for many reasons. Personal, professional and because, like anyone new in a job, I want to succeed. I want to repay the Trust for recruiting me and to be part of a team that creates a national centre of excellence that goes on to redefine clinical rehabilitation in this country.
Sometimes superlatives are banded around, especially in the building trade. Biggest, best, you hear that a lot. For me the NRC is different. It doesn’t need hyperbole. The job it will do, the place it will be, how it will foster innovation and collaboration in ways that haven’t happened before – this is what makes it special.
You can probably tell I’m passionate and excited. As I write this article we’re on the cusp of moving from design to delivery, from planning to the pragmatic job of building the thing. Yes we need some more lights to turn green before we can start in earnest but we are revving up the engines and looking forward to getting going.
I’ve been working within healthcare architecture and project construction management for many years and I’ve never had the opportunity to work on something that strikes me in quite the same way as the NRC.
It’s a privilege to be part of the team and I’m looking forward to making my contribution to this outstanding initiative.