Meet the members

A strong drive to help others achieve their goals – and to continue learning themselves – is shared by our three interviewees. Katie Puckett reports. Portraits by Wilde Fry

SAM DURING FCIOB

Owner-manager, Project & Development Consultants

Meet Sam During FCIOB, a development consultant, chartered environmentalist, student, ecologist and the CIOB’s man in Sierra Leone – not to mention a strong contender for the title of the institute’s busiest member. By day, During runs a development consultancy specialising in social housing projects in London, but he has enough strings to his bow for a small orchestra. Not least is his role as an international ambassador for the CIOB and as the founder of a new Sustainability Satellite Group within the London branch.

“When I go home in the evening, the first thing I do is switch on my laptop,” he says. “Sometimes I think I’ve taken on too much – I sit back and think ‘what am I doing? How can I balance all this?’ But I enjoy it, and when you enjoy it, it doesn’t feel like hard work.”

During was born in Sierra Leone, a West African nation of about 5 million people that is still recovering from the civil war that ended in 2002. Though he left many years ago to study in the UK, he still takes an interest in his birthplace. “I’ve got huge experience in regeneration and I’d like to go back and do my bit,” he explains.

In 2008, after meeting the president of Sierra Leone in London, he was invited to visit the country where he struck up a relationship with the Chancellor of the University of Sierra Leone. He has been advising the university on securing CIOB accreditation for its civil engineering degrees, and is representing the institute in forging links with the Sierra Leone Institution of Engineers.

During also hopes to make a physical contribution to the reconstruction of the country. He is leading design development of a new town project proposed by a group of Sierra Leoneans living in England, working under the name International Development Enterprise Associates, or IDEA (UK). Last October, During saw a presentation about the Mape project, which includes commercial buildings, a school and hospital, plus a resort aimed at tourists. “Each person [involved] has a huge amount of experience. They could easily have said ‘we don’t care about Sierra Leone, we’re comfortable here’ but they decided to go back and see what they can do. I was very impressed, and said ‘I’d like to get involved’.” During is now coordinating architects, engineers and environmental consultants on plans for the US $40m project.

He is particularly hopeful that he can make a contribution to restoring the ecology of Sierra Leone – he is studying for a PhD in ecological building practices in sub-Saharan Africa, at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. “Construction is to blame for a large amount of damage to ecosystems,” he says. “We see a nice piece of land, all we want to do is develop it. We’re affecting water quality, we drive species from their habitats and we bring noise and pollution. I’ve been thinking about how we can develop sensitively, and work with nature to achieve a good project.”

He visited the Mape site with ecologists to see which trees could be kept. “The landscape will be designed to fit with the ecology. This is the sort of thing builders and designers often didn’t think about in the past, but we should always think of it before we start building.”

During’s doctorate will add to the string of letters after his name. He is so committed to studying that even a recent heart operation hasn’t slowed him down. “I have a very inquisitive mind, I like research… Anything that comes up as the topic of the day, I want to know about it.” 

He first became interested in the environment while working for Metropolitan Housing Trust, and acted as sustainability champion on the £450m Clapham Park regeneration project. When the CIOB began to offer the Chartered Environmentalist qualification, he was one of the first to attain it. Now members applying for the qualification might meet him on the interview panel.

During hopes to complete his doctorate by the time of the Olympics. “I’ve always wanted to be Dr During, it’s got a nice ring to it,” he smiles. Afterwards, he says, he may be ready to slow down – but then he mentions the market for sustainability expertise in tropical environments…

BARBARA ENTWISTLE ICOB

Area manager, Velux

Meet Barbara Entwistle ICIOB, a one-woman recruitment fair for the construction industry. When she’s not climbing around building sites in the north-west for roof window specialist Velux, she is lecturing undergraduates on daylighting, doing demonstrations in schools, mentoring younger women in construction via the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology, or coming up with even more ways to spread the word at committee meetings for the CIOB Lancashire and Cumbria region.

“I believe if you’re chartered, you should educate, inspire and inform the next generation,” she explains. “If everybody who is chartered gave up one hour a year and went to local schools and colleges, that would make a massive improvement. We can’t expect anyone else to push this industry if we don’t do it at our own level.”

Entwistle, 51, is an incorporated member of the CIOB, and hopes to become chartered soon. Though she’s been working in construction for many years, including 14 at Velux, she only came to studying in her forties after a chance encounter with a lecturer from the University of Bolton. “I was delivering a seminar for Velux, and he said ‘Barbara, next time you’re in Bolton, come and see me about doing something for the students’. And I said, ‘I really should do something myself.’ So I went in for a cup of tea, and I enrolled 48 hours later. I didn’t leave for six years.”

Entwistle first took a degree in building studies, then the university offered her the chance to do a masters in construction management – one of the best things she’s ever done, she says. “There’s something great about studying later in life, you’ve seen a bit of life and you can be more analytical. It was extremely hard work and very fulfilling.”

She’s now a visiting lecturer at Bolton and several other universities, and aims to complete a PhD on the regeneration of Manchester. It sounds like an exhausting programme, but Entwistle seems to have boundless energy. She’s been a qualified cricket umpire since 1986 and a Lady Mayoress of Blackburn, which involved speaking at more than 400 events and becoming “an authority on giant radishes and chrysanthemums”.

At the beginning of May she undertook her most high profile engagement to date, sharing the stage with architect George Clarke at the Grand Designs Live show, of which Velux is a sponsor.

“Our seminar is called ‘Don’t Move, Improve’, and I’ll be talking to the audience about what they can achieve by using natural daylight and all the things they need to consider. We live in a society that watches copious DIY programmes, and people think it’s cheaper to do it themselves, but they’re embarking on very ambitious projects with little experience. We get people who don’t know the difference between a rafter and a purlin – one supports the roof, the other supports the house. A lady in Glossop said ‘you told me I could cut through a rafter’. I said, ‘you can, but that’s a purlin’.”

Entwistle’s appearance will be a way of demonstrating that women can be just as knowledgeable about construction as men, though she’s keen to encourage new entrants to the industry whatever their background or gender. “I’d like girls to get jobs in the industry not because they’re girls but because they’re the right person for the job. These days if you have ten QS jobs, you’ll get three women apply and seven men. If we could get that to five and five by the time I finish working, that would be fantastic. Then no one would bat an eyelid about a woman onsite.”

GORDON BROWNE MCIOB

Senior lecturer, Southampton Solent University

Meet Gordon Browne MCIOB, a senior lecturer in construction at Southampton Solent University, a veteran of disaster response, a promoter of sustainable building technologies for East Africa, and an expert at traumatising his contacts by leaving messages saying “Gordon Brown” called. “When he was Chancellor, everyone used to ask if I was phoning about their tax returns. But these days, it’s all quips about my expenses!”  

At 55, Browne is in a second career as a lecturer, but he spent his first two decades in construction combining site manager roles for UK contractors with short-term charity projects overseas. His skills helped build the infrastructure for a refugee camp in Ethiopia, and later took him to Rwanda and Kosovo. At the same time, he was a committee member and chair of the Thames Valley Centre.

When family commitments called time on his globetrotting career (his wife’s death meant raising his daughter as a single dad), Browne compensated by training the next generation to work in the humanitarian sector, running weekend courses for students and graduates for charities Red-R and Engineers Without Borders. “It’s ‘engineers’ in the broad sense – we train architects and construction managers as well,” he says. 

EWB places about 40 students a year in development projects, with many going on to longer placements. Former students pop into his email inbox from around the world. “Some go on to work for an aid agency, some might work for the overseas office of a British firm, and some will take up careers with a UK company – but they’ll be better for the experience. When I hear from them, I like to think I’m the one who may have influenced them.” 

For 20 years, Browne has been an advocate of sustainable non-fired earth blocks, and has used his expertise as a trustee of the Good Earth Trust, a British-run charity active in East Africa. The interlocking blocks are made of subsoil, water and a little cement, compressed on site by a hand-operated “ram” or press. It’s a simple, affordable, low carbon product to rebuild homes, economies and lives. 

Because the blocks are unfired, they do not contribute to the ugly deforestation around many African villages, where people use timber to fire brick kilns. Building walls also requires less mortar – and less costly, imported cement. 

The charity had looked to securing certified status under the Clean Development Mechanism  – companies needing to offset their carbon emissions could have bought carbon credits from the trust, providing it with a steady income. However, since the Copenhagen summit, the price of carbon has plummeted, making the costs involved in the accreditation process uneconomic.

So in the medium term, Browne would be delighted if a UK construction company was to “adopt” the trust, supporting it financially or with seconded personnel. 

Now that his daughter is older, Browne has been able to visit the Good Earth Trust projects. But mostly, his involvement with overseas development is through the enthusiasm he inspires in his students. At Southampton Solent, he teaches a module on sustainability and innovation, which led one student to propose a new stabiliser for the blocks based on caustic soda, and another to devise a way to improve ground insulation  in temporary shelters in cold climates. 

He says he is “not an academic, I’m a practical person with roots in site engineering and construction management.” But by taking that practicality to the world’s disaster areas and then back into the classroom, he’s quietly having a significant impact. EK

www.goodearthtrust.org.uk