Detailer 50 - Sinéad Conneely

[Music] Today on Detailer, I'm with Shaneid Kanili of Simple Works. We are at UK Reef in Leeds, which is for people who don't know a massive conference and networking fest around the Dock area and Royal Armories. And Shaneid, I suppose firstly, I'd like to ask you what you get out of things like this and what you think the sentiment of the industries is this year. Hi, I think for Ours at Simple Works, where Structural and Civil Engineering practice, for Ours, common conferences and stuff like this is a chance to actually kind of get out of the day today running of the business and actually make time to speak to people and meet people. And what's so nice about UK Reef is that you really can't walk more than like 100 metres without bumping into somebody that you know because it really feels like everyone is here. So it's much more of a networking thing than a conference as such until they're going to listen to people speak. You would say. For me, yeah, a lot to be careful, obviously, because I work with us to listen to. I think the content's really good, but I think UK Reef is so massive. And sometimes, you know, if you are busy back in the office in London and you get up here, for me personally, the last thing I want to do really is just sit and kind of back-to-back lectures. But just walking around, bumping into people and actually sometimes hearing what they've been to listen to can be really interesting and quite insightful. So like it didn't last night people were sharing things that they'd heard throughout the day. So I'm kind of getting a second hand. So what sort of sentiment were they expressing? What's the temperature gauge, which you say? Because I've heard the word bleak a few times in terms of the market. It feels like there's less optimism than there was say at Mipim, perhaps, geopolitical reasons. I think people are quite down. So most of the people that I would know and kind of speak to are other consultants, so engineers, architects, planning consultants, that kind of thing. I wouldn't know many people on kind of the finance side of things, but certainly in consultancy, everything just feels so hard at the minute. And that is. Why particularly? I think, you know, fees are kind of low. Things are uncertain. Projects are getting cancelled all the time. You can't rely on things. You know, an architect said to me this morning that she's actually completely changed the way that she kind of identifies is something going to come off. So she used to. Sorry, I'm saying this wrong. But basically, if she thought a project was like 50% likely to come off, before that tended to be the case like. But now she actually won't put anything into her forecast until it's fully confirmed. Because she's just been burned so often by things getting pulled. And how stressful is it for you as a fairly young business owner with that sort of background? We'd already tough here last year. But I think we've definitely felt in the last three months a big shift in London. So. For the better? For the better. And I think it comes in waves, right? I think different businesses experience peaks and troughs at different times. We're really busy at the minute. And I think a lot of projects that. We do a lot of work with local authorities. And in the last seven years, we've worked. I don't know how many projects that have gone to stage three tenders and just died. Or they've been retendered, retendered, retendered, and then died. Or is now a lot of work that we've been working on over the last two years is like, finally. Now, maybe it won't go ahead, but is out for proper tender. Like, main contractor is already serious about taking these jobs on. And it feels like, you know, stuff should be going to sight in the next few months. And it's definitely for us and the part of the industry that we work in. It does feel like more is going to get built soon. So tell me about the business and how you set up and your journey to it. Where did you. I always asked this. Did you always want to be an engineer when you were kiddie? No, I wanted to be everything. I'm very easily swayed and distracted. Like, today, walking back into the conference at my business partner's field, I was like, should we set up an office in Leeds? It was like, no, I don't think so. But as I've been to lovely here, I wanted to be a vet. I wanted to be a police woman. I wanted to be a mortician. Why? There was a really cool lady who worked on CSI Miami. Who was the woman who caught open the bodies and tried to figure out what was wrong with them. And then just before I went to uni. Not so dissimilar from a vet then. Not dissimilar. Similar. And just before I finished secondary school, I guess I'd heard about renewable energy or decided I wanted to do something that was going to make a difference. So I was starting university in 2006, which was like. Where did you go? In Goaway, it was always to Harlem. So I did a general engineering degree. I was general engineering in the first year and the new specialised. And I really wanted to go into renewable energy. But I went into uni in the good times and came out. Groundwise. In the. We'll just like, kill tiger, loads of money. You know, the construction industry was booming. There were pump and loads of money into research and renewables. And then came out of college 2010, peak recession, no money for renewables. So I came to London. I did a Masters in Applied Maths and then applied for job at AKT2. So kind of accidentally became a structural engineer, I guess. It was never like. Never something I thought about really, it just sort of happened. And I loved working with AKT and then I met my business partner Phil. I am on our other. Junder Hannief or Albert or. Yeah, they were there. They were still there. Yeah. By the time I joined it was like 120 people. So I wouldn't have had much to do with them. So I had an amazing team leader at the time. I worked on really cool projects. Can you list some of them you allowed to talk about any of them? Yeah, so my very first team was with Steve Tune, who's still there, using Boss. And we worked on a lot of the stuff at Kings Cross for Argent. So I actually met somebody yesterday who was the Camden Council. And I was like, "Oh, I designed all the half landings in the emergency staircase." He was like, "Yeah, they're still there." I was like, "Great, there you go." And Kings Cross B1 was my first proper project. And that was for BMP Paribas, which is, I think, the temporary Google office at the minute before they moved into the big one. Right. And then worked on some bigger schemes, Heatherwick. One that was going to be an Abu Dhabi, but never got built. A lot of big stuff that never got built. And worked on Google San Francisco, which was taken over by a local firm. So like really exciting stuff. But at the same time, me and Phil, as my business partner now, and a couple of other friends we set up a thing called Scale Rule, which is a community interest company. And it was, it's still, we still have it, it's still going, but it was kind of focused on engaging with young people. So we would go and do a workshop in a secondary school or maybe bring secondary school students together. Tell them about engineering and architecture. Do like a design and build competitions. So we'd give them a brief for a pavilion that was going to be built at Clarkamull Design Week. They would have to come up with the designs. We'd bring in industry judges. And they would pick-- This is some initiative. Yeah, do you, what made you think to do that? Well, our friend Dan, who is in New York, he's going back this summer and he might shout out to Dan, he might come back and help his rerun. So that organization is called Scale Rule. He had worked on a lot of these kind of big projects today. He didn't ever got built. So he'd never built anything. And he's very proactive. And he was like, I just want to build something. Why don't we go get some young people to help us design a thing and we'll build it. So we physically ourselves built all of those pavilions. The detailing wasn't great. But they did the job, stayed up for three days and then we dismantled them and tried to convince somebody to use the timber for like planters or something. So they usually would get a second home. So we were kind of doing that. And a lot of like very fast lessons learned because we had to, you know, we set it up as a proper company, community interest company, learned the hard way that you do actually have to file a HMORC if you do that. So all the um, we were technically running a business, even though it was totally not for profit. And we probably weren't doing it very well, but so then. We'll make sure you say that. Always then we just didn't know it. We were so naive, we just didn't know anything about HMORC or governance for her. Just any of that stuff. Yeah. And then we just, I don't know, one day we were like getting to be quite senior at AKT and working on all these mega projects. And we were also doing the stuff with scale rule that was actually making a difference. And we were like, maybe we could run our own engineering project. I'm interested in the point at which these decisions are made. Were you in the pub after work or were you just. We were actually in the pub after a scale rule workshop. Okay. And I think with the NLA, we ran, um, we did a workshop because, um, so NLA and who owns the bit behind Liverpool Street Station? British land. British land. No, someone else. I can't remember, but we've been brought in to do a pavilion. And it was the first time that someone was actually paying us to do our kind of scale rule thing for them. And it was partnership at NLA and someone else, I can't not remember who. And we did this pavilion, this kind of a mate we did like workshops and then the pavilion. was made out of old pipe and it was called pipe radio and basically you could speak into one end and someone would be able to hear on the other side of the list. It was quite cool. And Phil and I were in the pub with someone called Andy who now works with us, but he was a colleague at AKT and also he was like always very involved at scale rule. And just one of those things we were just like, just stay for one more, we'll stay for one more and then Phil and I were getting the bus home. We were like, we really couldn't run our own company. But it was one of those things born in the pub with all the confidence of whatever at 10 points. But then that was the summer of 2018 and we were like, you know, woke up the next day and still wanted to do it. So we kind of enlisted Laura and Johnny and Dan at the time who gave me some surnames. Sorry. Laura and Hannigan. Johnny Hawkshow and Dan Bergzegel were other three co-founders. Dan did leave quite quickly. I think like that's September to go to New York. So he was the one that we set scale rule with and he'll be coming back to London in the summer. And we again spent a lot of time in a different pub, the Lamb on Holloway Road. You could order Yardsell pizza to there. So it was perfect for us. Maybe we just sit around talking about what was this business going to be, what was going to offer, why was it going to be different and everything always came back to this idea of like purpose. And could we actually have purpose in the work that we're doing, you know, not just did you feel you were lacking that way you were then? Just a little bit not to decry just a little bit in the no the work itself was amazing, right? Because you're working on big stuff like my last project was. I was on the substructure teams, the three story basement underneath two towers in Voxel. And you know, those are big projects. You don't like, I'll probably never work on anything like that again. But the idea of who was at four, it was like something that was always rattling around in my brain. And you know, it kind of goes back to the decision that I was making when I was 18 that I wanted to be an engineer who made a difference. You know, I wanted to be working in renewables or whatever. It kind of came back to that of like, well, who am I building this for? And you know, these two towers were for a Chinese company, the cheapest apartment was a million pounds. It's like, it was going to be a really high end hotel in there. It's like, who are we really building for? You're not really making people's lives better with this? Or maybe, but, and so that was something that always kind of was like bothering me a little bit. And we wanted to have more autonomy over the kinds of projects that we worked on. So we wanted to target like councils, local authorities, community groups, schools, anything, support and leisure, obviously. I'd love to design a velodrome. So you'll see because you're something the site gets for. Sorry, but I probably don't know. A site gets runner for swimmer, everything, right? All the things. I'll try anything. I'm an electric mountain biking on Friday. Oh, yeah. Yeah. How days. Yeah. So then we just kind of like workshopped that for, guess like six months, the hardest part was coming up at the name. But we learned how did you come up with the names? We just talked about it a lot. There was so we we decided we all had a couple of visuals and there was some really terrible names. But then you'd bring something forward thinking it was the best name ever and someone else would be like, there's no way we're not being called that. So at the time, were the ones you scrubbed? Can you remember? I remember. But I basically visualed anything that had an ING at the end, because I didn't want our name to be a verb. Yeah. So that took a long time. And then when we got to simple works, it really felt like consolation price, because none of us loved it. It was just there was five of us trying to pick a name. So it was just a thing that we all were like, that's fine. But for us, I guess this I explained the nine. Yeah, the sentiment was just, you know, to be a good engineer, you need to be able to kind of break things down into their simplest forms. And you're always working with industry professionals who don't have an engineering background or you're dealing with clients who really sometimes have had nothing to do with the industry. So if you can't explain yourself or if you can't actually try to explain to them why they should maybe reconsider a decision that they've made in the brief or like, you know, trying to convince an MVP engineer or an architect. So that just became kind of part of our ethos that we still try and drill into our team now is that, um, like start simple with all things. And if something becomes too complicated, just take a step back and think, could this be simpler? Like could this be more straightforward? Because the kinds of clients that we have now are very cost-driven, you know, for working with, we're, to an equal bit of work now at H like council, Kandlin council. And they want to deliver really good quality housing, but has to be simple, you know, to give people real value for money. And, um, that's something that we always try and make sure the word trying to do is to be giving value to our clients and making sure that we are adding value. So you have something of a social ethos, don't you, which, which sort of leads to me thinking you, you have a vetting process for the projects that you take on. Do you? I mean, you have an ethical stance to you. And how does, if you do, how does that operate? I think, so we've been going seven years. Most tenders that come across our desk now are for projects that we would want to work on. You know, so we're getting, lately, we're getting a lot of requests from main contractors who are bidding for projects or councils. Sometimes we're the incumbent engineer, sometimes we're not. But I would say, like, 80 to 90% of what we're being asked to bid on is public sector work, affordable housing, kind of community work. We do a lot of work with community centers. Because because they know what you do, right? Yeah, and I think that's the kind of part of the market that we've carved out for ourselves. Um, I mean, it would be, we're not turning down work. You know, it's not like we're like, there's not loads of work coming our way that we're like, oh, no, we won't do that. But I think the work that's coming is the stuff that we like, we went into business to do this kind of work. Yeah. So that's quite nice. And then so the brand is working. I did it. So and then sometimes there'll be like a really nice competition where all the architects will want us on their team. And that's really nice. There's like a nice problem to have. Um, why do you think that is? Because sometimes nice people, nice people, but also if it's a purpose-driven competition, the Symbolic Scale Real Partnership is a really good thing to have on your team, right? To have, you know, an organization that is kind of shown that they do care and that they are purpose-driven. Um, but yeah, but then sometimes the lack of experience is something that kind of gets us on tend to, like, means that people won't come to us for tenders and that kind of thing. So that's the kind of the period wherein at the minute is we have some big projects that have now completed, but a lot of, a lot of the tender processes they want to have you to have like three types of this project completed, three types of this other project completed. And we don't have that in our portfolio yet. Partly because the industry has been so slow, say over the last four years, where so much stuff has gone into planning and never come back out. Um, so I think, you know, if all these lovely council projects get built in the next year or two, um, I'm kind of quietly confident that we'll be able to kind of show this back catalog of stuff that's actually been built. Because we've loads of big projects in our portfolio, but they're all in for planning. Yeah. So still on the ethos tip, um, you are a bee call. Um, tell me about that process and what led you to want to do that. Um, it's kind of cheesy, but, uh, Evonne Schu and I are the guy who founded Patagonia wrote this amazing book called Let My People Go Surfing and just talks a lot about how they set up and what was really important to them. Uh, the tagline of the book is like, I think it's stories from a reluctant businessman or something like that because he was just a climber. You know, who kind of started off making equipment for climbing and then ended up having this mega company. And they are a bee corp. And when I read the book, there was just so much in it. And obviously the businesses are not comparable because we're a services business, their, um, product. And to become a bee corp when you're selling product is way more difficult. Right. Because your supply chain has to be squeaky clean. And what came out of that process for then was that, you know, there was factories that they thought were ethical. And when they went over to visit them because they actually need to surger by stuff. It wasn't because they weren't paying minimum wage or paying minimum wage or like in some cases, there was die that was being dumped out into the river. And they didn't know that was happening. Are they hadn't considered the impact of that? And say, I had to change the dye they were using. So just like, it just seemed like going through the process was actually the process itself seemed like it would be a really good thing to do. And that's exactly what it was. Like it took us a really long time to do it because when we set off, we got busy really quick. And becoming a bee corp just was never really on my critical to do list. You know, there's always something else to do. So it took a very long time of just like, you know, making the checklist. Give me an example of the checklist for people who don't know what do you have to do? What hoops are there? So like super simple stuff. Do you pay London living wage? So for us, we actually then had to check the cleaning because all your via supply chain do they pay London living wage. So then the cleaning company that we were using weren't paying London living wage. We had to change cleaning company for the office. Right. So this like stuff costs you more Yeah, but pennies, you know, but it's something that I hadn't thought to ask. Yeah, so again, it comes back to like the process. It makes us a better organization just for what did they say when you had to reject them and because they weren't doing that don't remember. Yeah, interesting. But then yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's interesting. But and then other things are like, what's your review process for your team? You know, do you actually have reviews? How do you feed stuff back to them? What's the training quality of their work? Yeah, and just like their development. So a lot on staff development. We also then they kind of tailor it to you. So you do the initial impact assessment and then you get given somebody from B Corp who kind of tailors the questions to you in your business. So we were then asked to quantify percentage of turnover related to refer projects and percentage of turnover for clients who were purpose driven. And that again is like something really interesting to report on. So the year that we became B Corp, I think it was between which was Wednesday. I actually can't remember five years ago. Is that like in our we were in our old office. So maybe 2024. Yeah, by the time we actually like two years finished it. Yeah. Um So I think that year we were between 1560% refurb 1560% purpose driven clients and then the target was always to kind of increase that year on year. And I haven't run the numbers for the last financial year. And sorry to get into the detail, but how did they define purpose driven clients? Um, any so we had to give like the website of all of the clients we were considering to be purpose driven. And they assess it. Yeah, so local authority purpose driven. And a community group we were doing work for Hastings Commons at the time they have like a clear purpose. And kind of mission statement. Right. So and you know we were doing work with other community groups, charities. Uh, a university is technically I think was technically because it was education could be purpose driven. So a good developer in the comments that does lots of good social value work. Could be. Is that okay? That's just assessed its board line and it's just assessed. Who was in and who was out anyway? Um, anyone that was boarded line we left out and actually in the end. Because it had taken so long because you have to provide evidence for everything right. The process itself was relatively straightforward because we were doing everything that needed to be done. But gathering the evidence as well as taking the time and at the time we didn't really have any admin support. There was still AI. Uh, so it was just me in my time and that's why it was taking so long for me to actually just finish this process and get it done. Uh, and in the end we got to I think you need 80 points. And I said I had a team's call with the guy from B Corp. And I was like, can we just submit now? I just like this, this could take me another three months. Just because you have to like make you to gather all the data, pull it all together. And he was like, oh, you have enough score. He was like, you know, you're just going to. Does this yeah, you can submit. So we did. So our score could have been higher. But I gave up post hired. Yeah. And is it the case that once you do it, it's easy to maintain. You're meant to improve year on year. Oh, okay. So I need to do our. The even better reason for submitting it with your lower score. Yeah, I wasn't going to say that is what he said to me on the call. And so we do our impact assessment last year and we had improved on, you know, most of the metrics. And I need to do it now for the year to scum. Um, but hopefully it will also be in it. And is it a burn to business to people seek you out? Because you're a B Corp. Is it I think we do enough with it? Yeah. I think um, I want to when we do our impact assessment this year, I want to actually like, publicize it. You know, and actually like get it out there. Maybe write an article or something about it. Well, we're very bad as PR. Um, we're not very good at kind of getting them. Why? It's time. Um, but we have, you know, we've got support now on that side of things. So we're hoping in the next few months, just to be get like better, getting our message out and that kind of thing. I think we, when you're in it and you're like at the call phase, like it's hard. Sounds really like egotistical, but it's hard for me to think that those people who don't know who we are. Yeah. But obviously we're like a super teeny tiny little company in a huge industry. Every week there's companies, you know, I see the names of companies that I've never heard of. So you have to kind of constantly remind yourself that people don't know who we are and people don't, you know, are not going to seek us out necessarily unless somebody recommends us for things. So while I'm quite good at like holding a network of people, you have to kind of constantly be getting your message out. Like a lot of people know that I'm a cyclist. They probably don't know that I'm an engineer. So I have to make sure that we're constantly reminding people who we are, what we do, why we could add value to their project. Um, so it's something we just need to get better at telling people. And that's partially why you are here. It leads UK Reve to network and we might remind people who you are. Yeah. And like, again, this like this side of the networking is something that we are quite good at. I could quite nice people fill in. I quite not. Not be around. But it's sometimes it's difficult to then turn that into actual work. If you don't take the next step. Yeah. And that's just something we need to improve on is actually the kind of like following off of people and, you know, asking for. So just going back to your post pub planning of the business, what made you think that you were good as a fit you and Phil? What's his son in? So Phil Isaac. Sorry. But there was actually there was four of us at the very start. So myself, Phil Isaac, Johnny Hawk, Sean, Laura Hannigan. Okay. So force by the Beatles. Like the Beatles. We were just great friends, you know, and we'd been doing the kind of scale rule thing. It's gone on really well. I mean, we're quite young. Like I was tarrygy when we were having those conversations in the pub. And most engineering practices are not born that young. You all AKT. Yeah. Yeah. So did you do a mass resignation? Three of us did. Yeah. Phil left first. And then us other three to the group. How did that go down? And R&D was shocked definitely. I felt terrible. I had a really good relationship with him. You're just letting them down. You know, they've like, they put so much into us. And they gave me great opportunities. I'm the kind of person who's like, I want to be promoted and I like, you can't be promoted. I'm like, why I want to do the work anyway? They're like, okay. So he, and like Robin Adams, he just, you know, when I asked for more work, or if I want to do this, or I want to do that, he was like, sure, as long as you then followed through and did it, which I generally did. So I think, you know, they just, they gave us great opportunities. And I think I always felt bad about that. You know, in our leaving speech, Laura and I left on the same day. He said it obviously was a real change. He was me and Laura because we're women. You know, we could have been two of the female directors. And Laura said, well, on one day, we're going to be directors of our own thing. Which brings me, I suppose, fairly neatly to the gender question, which I hesitate to ask you. But I will. Because you give me consent. What's it like? What has it been like being a female in a broadly male profession? And in the time that you've been in it, what, what have you noticed change if anything, either for the good or the bad? For me, as a childless woman, it's been great. And I think when you're younger, there's this kind of like reverse sexism where you're brought along to project interviews. And I remember I was brought to when I said, reverse sexism. Yeah. So like, you know, it's, I wouldn't token when you're being tokenist to you kind of. Yeah. So it's not positive discrimination. Because it's already isn't. It isn't. I was brought to interviews when I was at AKT to show a woman on the team. And that upset the guys who were on the same level as me. Because they were missing out on that kind of exposure. And I always saw as a really positive thing. Which I think it was, you know, it's like it's hard to look at that in it. Just purely from a personal development thing. Obviously, I was the one, in a better position in that kind of thing. And I think I was really lucky that I worked in teams that were not sexist. They were not derogatory. But I also have quite an assertive personality in nature. So I think if you are quieter, softer, it could have been more difficult. I think because I, you know, there's this thing that people reward the kind of behavior that maybe they see in themselves. But what I have seen, like firsthand from women that I know, is that the industry and other industries are not set up for women with children. You know, I saw that at AKT. I saw women who wanted flexibility to be able to leave early to pick up their kids. This is your scene as like a part-timer. And I'm sure it's changed now to a point. But I think this idea of like child care, it hasn't gone away. And I, you know, there's obviously like structural issues. Like Phil and Nora now have a son and the cost of nursery is obviously eye watering. But Phil and Nora both want to be at work, you know? So I think the childcare thing is an issue, but I don't think that that's, you know, that's universal. That's not an engineering thing. I think construction, sometimes people can be a bit funny when you're a woman coming in and like kind of barking orders, but they usually adapt pretty quick. And so I actually don't personally, I think I'm better off being a woman in industry, because you're also more memorable, especially on the bike rides that we do. And I stand out more. Any woman on a bike ride will stand out more. There's just less of us. And I think people want women on teams, you know, on competition teams, people want women on panels. And when there's less of you, it just means that there's more opportunity. But the problem is still that there's less of us. You know, it's kind of like double edged thing. So I think we need more women in industry for sure, but I think it's changing slowly. Yeah. You mentioned the cycling there, so let's talk about that for a bit. I distinctly remember that amazing challenge you did, which was the Everest thing. Talk to me about that. That was going up and down the same hill in North London, wasn't it many, many hundreds of times I imagine. It's not the name of Swain's Lane 125 times. It was COVID. We're all a bit bored. What percentage gradient is Swain's Lane? I think at it's worst. It's about 25 percent. That kind of like, and how long is it heard, Corsair, suddenly 900 metres long. I needed to raise some money for this other event I was doing and kind of nothing else you could do in COVID. A lot of people were Everesting. And it's called that because it's the same height as that. Oh yeah, so you keep just keep going up and down the hill until you reach the height of Everest. Why did you want to do that? Scyped on the charity aspect. Is there a challenge, person in you, and where does that come from if there is? Because there is in me, I think. I think I'm, I mean, I don't eat less soap. I don't think I'm competitive, but everyone else thinks I'm competitive. Is that what it's about? Competitiveness. I think there's like a. I like. No, it's a bit like me saying earlier when we set up an office in Leeds. If someone does something, I'm like, "Oh, I think I want to do that." So everyone was Everesting, so I was like, "Oh, I want to do that." Or I'll see somebody do like a silly, long race. If I'm like, "Oh, I want to do that." Or I see someone do CrossFit, so I take a CrossFit. I think it's like. Life's too short. Things look cool if I want to do them. But then also there's like, there's an ego element of it, which is like, "Do I think I can do that? I want to prove to myself that I can do that." Like I like doing hard stuff. I like doing things that maybe seem impossible. I started ultra running a few years ago, which I'm not very good at. So I had my first ever pro-pro. And what way are you not good at it? I mean, you do the distance, right? So. You should train a lot. Yeah. And I think since we started simple works, when I started my first Iron Man, I trained like 20 hours a week. Kind of bit. Okay, first of all, our ultra is 50k or more, isn't it? Yeah. And Iron Man is remind me. 3.8k swim. 180k bike, 42k one. Okay. So when I was first. What did it say me, yeah? Ah, in the same area. I trained loads. Like 12 to 20 hours. I was like relatively young. You know, didn't have to work loads of overtime when I was at AKT, so I could like fill the training in. But once we started simple works, it was hard to prioritize sport. It was overwork. So now really, I only ride my bike for work. You know, so I did the cycle here. Obviously, you and I were cycling in Italy together a few months ago, which was like a holiday, but also for work. Because it's networking, and I think some of the best connections I've made in industry have been on a bike. But then yes, and then I started trying to train for ultimatums, and you really have to train a lot. And I think you can pull off an 80k race, but I entered a 150 km race last year. But it did not go very well, because I hadn't. But you ran in it. I didn't finish it. I pulled out 66k. Well, that's pretty good, isn't it? I sprained my ankle about 25k and kept going. I don't really remember it happening, so I only gave it that catastrophic. But then over like the day, I started a midnight, and then it just kind of got sore and sore, but I was in a really negative mindset that that had never happened to me before in an event like that. And I just meant the whole thing, like fixating on the end, was usually, you know, there's a saying, we're on the kilometer, you're in, or cycle the kilometer you're in. And I couldn't get into that. All I was thinking was 150k, and it's too far. And that was around Mon Blanc, it was like 10,000 meters of elevation. And then once the adrenaline, I think, had started to wear off then my foot was really sore. So I was used like using my poles as crutches. So I got to 66k. My brother and my partner were there. They had driven to that aid station. I made it through the checkpoint, but I sat on the wall. I had like a little cry. I was like, I can't do it. My brother was like, are you sure? I was like, no, no, I'm going to pull out. He was like, just think about it for five minutes. I was like, I really don't want to do it. And he was like, okay, so I handed in my check, got home, took my shoe off, and my foot was like the size of my head. Yeah. So I was vindicated. Yeah. I was so happy. If I'd gotten in on my ankle, it's fine. I'd been really upset. But did you feel a sense of failure? Yeah. No, yeah, huge. Did you? Yeah. Because that's never really happened before. I've never got out to do something like that. I'm not finished it. You don't make you just have more resolve to do it again. Somewhere else, another challenge is how you packed it away. I don't know if I can put that kind of time into training. Yeah. You know, like the. No, I did. So that was August in October. I found out I was B12 deficient, which had been causing kind of like some anxiety. And I started getting these funny spasms down my left side. And I do think that probably have fed into like the negativity. Because I got into like a really negative headspace at work. And I like it. You know, everything always happens at once. Filler just gone off on pat leave. I was having whatever negatives. I guess just anxiety. But like just a lot. And I really didn't feel like myself. And thought I was like losing my mind. And then had this funny spasm on my left arm, rang the GP. He was like, oh, you just need to be 12. So then I had six B12 injections over two weeks. And I was on top of the world. It was unbelievable. Everyone get your B12 checked. Right. Like the energy one, right? Isn't it? Yeah, I guess if you're deficient, there's like neurological problems. You need it for brain function. I don't eat meat. That's right. It's the one that veganism is deficient on B12, right? So is that connected because of your vegetarianism? Yeah, but like fish, but there's no. I don't know if it's just B12 and fish. But anyway, they gave me my six injections. I was full of beans. So yeah, you're right. Maybe I should try the old trigger. Yeah. Although it might be 12. It's hard to find the time to train. So tell me about the work that you're doing in the moment. Civil war is next for you guys. And indeed, what is your ambition personally and as a practice? Is there goals or a business plan? Have you got a strategy or are you much more relaxed about life? No, yeah. We've always had a kind of business plan that we revisit every year. So Phil and I actually have our AGM tomorrow, which we have kind of scheduled so that we go into it fresh off the back of UK reef. So we should be. I mean, I say fresh. I'm exhausted. I think I'll be 12. But kind of like head empty of office stuff, right? So we'll go in and do our kind of half day AGM tomorrow and start AGM. We always do our one year, two year, five year plan. And it's really interesting to look back at those because we were so naive when we first settled. So every year at AGM, we do a kind of like, where do we serve ourselves? And one year, two years, five years. And when we first set off, we were two are, say, five year turnover and how many staff we thought we'd have in five years. And when you look back at when we did it our first year, the turnover to staff, the ratio was like, way off because we didn't know any of that stuff. We didn't know what it took to run a business. And so I think now our kind of five year plan is, we just want stability. And we want to. want kind of steady flow of projects that have a purpose that's aligned to ours. Like we hopefully have a lot of projects going to site this year for we've got the Hackney small sites program. So two projects there one is Morris Blitz or Arkeo, Nivevern with Citizens Design Bureau and then we've got two projects with Camden, Jazz Balam and Carl Riches also on the small sites program. Got an amazing project up in Cambridge here with Mole Architects which is for a monastery up there and so extra accommodation yet. So like super sustainable, they're working with a modular company, the super low carbon for the superstructure. A monastery, I know. Yeah. Have you met the clients? I haven't. I think Phil House. But yeah, they've been an amazing client, just super reasonable, very clear. I think what we love about client is like clear brief, very understanding of the process and then actually having the I guess I don't know just appointing a good project manager makes such a big difference. On projects where we don't have that you really feel it and on projects where you do have it, you almost don't notice it because things are so smooth. You know, that kind of we're working on it. A project with general projects at the minute and the project manager on that is a lady called Kaji from Quartz and she's just on it. Right, she is like onto our team all the time. I said to one of them last week she was like, she's ringing me again. I was like, but isn't that great? Because in a few weeks when you're a bang on program and you've done everything that she needs you to do, it's like it'll all be gravy. So I think yeah, we love having good project manager. And I'm just looking my notes for questions that I've forgotten and there's one about mentoring. You do a lot of mentoring, I think. How important is that to you and what do you get into it? I mean, I think for me it comes back to just this and it sounds a bit trite but just you always want to feel like you're giving back, you know, I think I feel like people put a lot of time into me when I was at AKT, when I was at uni, like and I really want to make sure that the people who maybe wouldn't have access to this industry get it. You know, so when we set up scale rule, that's what it was about. It was about widening participation in the industry and making sure that, you know, young people who maybe don't have any family members in the industry. It's like when you're a teenager, you don't know a lot, right? As in, you know, they have access to the internet in a way that we didn't but you don't know what you don't know. And if you don't have family members in certain industries, you might not know that there's jobs in there that could be really well suited to you. You have so many jobs in the built environment. And I think to create a built environment that is for everybody, it needs to be designed by everybody. We had a young engineer intern with us last summer, her name is Faelic and she did a scale rule workshop in 2015 or 2016 and I was also volunteering with a charity, the Access Project, who provides tutors to young people doing GCSEs or A-levels. So I was her A-level maths tutor. So she used to come to the AKT office once a week and we would do maths tutorials and then she went off, studied engineering and she interned with us last summer and that was such an amazing full circle moment for us because it's almost like, what year is it now? Yeah, it's a 10 year period where we managed to kind of see and it's only one person but we also don't know who went on to study engineering. Managed to see a young person through from GCSE, doing a workshop with us through her A-levels, onto study engineering and then coming in term with us and then she got a full time job. She wanted to stay close to her mum because her mum's not that well. And it's just amazing. You're that kind of thing where you really you know, you really are making a difference and I think for me, sometimes I look back and like I think the people who influenced me most, you know, like my maths teacher just gave me such confidence in secondary school and I think people talk a lot about the impact of teachers on young people and it does just take for somebody to take a bit of time and give you that confidence and I think the scale workshops for us, we can see, we can see what it does for young people actually, who maybe are a little bit like disillusioned with society or you know what they know of industry but when you build something that they've designed and they've had an input in like the pride that you see on them, that really can actually change someone's life I think and so for us, it's obviously self-serving because it feels really nice but we always just want to make sure that we are giving back any way we can. Last question, had you got another cycle ride plan but what's your next challenge, what will it be? Is it something you, is there something you haven't done yet like rock climbing? I'm maybe done that. I'm not very good at rock climbing, no. So I did Hany Half on Sunday, eight of the Symbolrix team did Hany Half on Sunday for Hany Fubank, which is a half marathon running, Half-Worth and running our offices based on Hany so that was amazing and it's the first time in probably like 12 years that I have no event. Okay, interesting. So I don't know. So I don't know. So what, why is that? Leaving time for more work, more relaxed about life. So I don't need it. Well I do crossfit now so I just really like onto the gym. Okay. Trying to learn how to do a muscle-up. What, what is that please? Where you pull yourself up on the bar and then up over the top. And that's my focus. Which is a more of a solitary thing isn't it than these are all always nice? So social. Okay. Yeah, my gym's amazing. I have loads of friends in the gym. Actually I've gotten some work out of the gym. Okay. And there's an architect who I'd been training with for like months and we had never talked about work and it like took us a long time to realize we're both in the same industry so we're working with them on a project. And my final question is about monasteries. What is the job? I'm absolutely fascinated by this. So it's Amervati which is the monastery of the Cambridge Air and there's another monastery not too far away. New build. No. Well, so the project that we're doing is a new build. It's an existing monastery but we're just doing a new build element that's going to be like more accommodation because they have a lot of people visit. Okay. And as far as I know it's all male. So it'll either be monks who are visiting or kind of lay people but I think they're all men. You have to be mad to stay at the monastery. Simple monks. Simple monks. Yeah. It's a really nice project working with malls. It's been amazing. So we're really excited to see that one. It's like amazing. And is there, sorry, the final one. Is there another sector you'd like to get into? Because it feels like you when you were saying before it feels like almost you've been pigeonholed into a certain bracket of work, although you're happy with that work. Is there a building typology that you would like to do that's on your velodrome wish list? You said velodrome. That's right. Because that is designing a velodrome. We'd love to do. Why particularly just because you love cycling. I love cycling. It's I mean look anything sports and leisure. It would be really fun. With the monks like a velodrome in there. They'd probably like paddle. Right. We did do a paddle complex that may or may not go ahead. Obviously paddle is growing quite quickly. Yeah. What else? Yeah. Any just you know what anything that like gives people joy. But offices doesn't seem to be your thing. Or is it? No, no, we do. We do have like flexible workspace for local authorities. Yeah. We've done community centers is like a really or like a building for community use. We've just done two projects for Hastings commons in Hastings. One of them is Eagle House which is what if do. And that's an amazing space. It's just opened. And that kind of thing, we for really purpose driven client. You know, they're opening something for the community. And that's going to be some flexible workspace. Also did a lot of flexible workspace with them. Swindon Council, which was a refer above grade two listed carriage works. See, I think we probably talk too much about housing. We do a lot of commercial. But yeah, I'd like to do more sports. Well, thank you for your time. It's been great talking to you. Thank you. I'm very glad you didn't become a vet. I don't want to share it. Please, women quite scary. I would have been a great police to think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because people are scared of me. I make a very bad first impression. Okay. People think I'm important in a police person. Well, I think people think I'm quite stern. Yeah. And I'm not at all. No, fake news. Thanks, tonight. Thank you.