Every Picture Tells a Story

It is always satisfying when paths cross and you come across young people who stand out and you follow their journey as their career progresses.

Such is the story of a young man, named Sam Lewis (now twenty-five) who first came to the attention of Shufflebottom’s Project Manager, Steven Sharp, when Sam was on his first placement as a trainee Quantity Surveyor. At that time, Sam was working for Tilbury Douglas (formerly Interserve), a long-established and respected contractor delivering vital public sector projects, on the development of the BIOMAS power station at Port Talbot. At that time too, Shufflebottom was supplying the steelwork for this multi-million pound investment into wood-fired power as part of Welsh Government’s Green Energy Plan designed to meet the country’s renewable energy needs.

And that’s when these two people’s paths initially crossed via a piece of art. Steven, had great interest in the project and one evening, as the BIOMAS project was under construction, he did a quick pen and watercolour sketch of the building and sent a copy to the construction site where Sam was working. For two and a half years, the whole time Sam was working at Tilbury Douglas, the copy sketch, took pride of place on the wall next to Sam’s desk.

And then Sam moved on and so did the sketch. When Sam began working as a QS on the development of Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen, Steven noticed the piece of his art in place with Sam, at Glangwili – a project that Shufflebottom was also involved with, delivering the structural steel.

Recently, Sam has progressed along his career path and left Gangwili to take up a QS role with ISG, a global dynamic construction specialist delivering places where people and businesses thrive. When Steven heard this news, he felt he needed to mark the career move. He did so by returning to his sketch book and taking out the original watercolour sketch, framing it, and presenting it to Sam as a leaving present.

It’s a strange world. Sam is now working with ISG and so too is Shufflebottom for the first time on the delivery of structural steel for the new prestigious high-spec Welsh Medium School in Pontypridd. Although we are not working together with Sam on this particular project at ISG, we feel sure our paths will cross again at some stage in the future. And we’ll look forward to that.

Sam has always been a very polite and confident young man and I have seen him move his way along his chosen career path as a Quantity Surveyor and now expanding his horizons and joining ISG. Good luck Sam in your new post!

Steven Sharp
Projects Manager
Shufflebottom Ltd