1Why did you join Berkeley?

I had reached the point in my consulting career where progression in one of the bigger consultancies would come at the cost of delivering client work, i.e. more time would be spent on internal propositions and sales rather than working directly with clients. My ultimate goal has always been to deliver excellent client value and at Berkeley I have the opportunity to focus on that without some of the other internal commitments you find elsewhere.

Throughout the interview process I also really valued the time that the partners spent letting me get to know more about their own backgrounds, the organization and its culture, whilst finding out more about me. That kind of commitment during the recruitment process is a real ‘green flag’ for me and shows that Berkeley truly cares about recruiting people who are the right fit.

2What’s the most complex challenge you’ve helped a client to overcome?

I worked as the design lead for a nation-wide field service transformation at a major utility company, transforming the way they scheduled work and carried out planned and reactive repairs across their network. The client was facing the challenge of local teams operating in completely different ways prior to the project commencing and a critical challenge in the design was creating a new solution which aligned the teams around a unified process.

This was much more than a simple digital implementation; it required significant business process change and release planning to ensure a smooth roll-out. This challenge was overcome by working hand in hand with business representatives from across the affected workforce (including everyone from senior managers to planners and field operatives).

The transformation was a huge success, resulting in significant efficiency savings for the client (c.12% improvement in operational efficiency), and was nominated for the 2022 Utility Awards.

3What are your values and how have they informed your career?

Some of the key values in both my personal and professional life are: collaboration, transparency and trust.

Transparency is incredibly important to me. We can only understand each other's challenges if we communicate them. I have seen too many times when a programme status report suddenly turns from green to red because an issue has been downplayed until it is too late to fix it. I pride myself on being open and honest about challenges and limitations from the start so that we can immediately work to understand and fix them.

Trust is also something which massively informs my career. We cannot always solve our challenges alone and we need to trust those we work with to do the right thing. In turn, I expect the teams I work with to trust my judgement where needed. I like to build a working environment where we can get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, trust each other to excel in our respective areas and support each other where required.