May 14, 2026 · 38 min · 20 segments
Construction is good at delivering projects. Too often, it starts before asking whether it is solving the right problem. In this episode of *Behind the Built Environment*, BESA Chief Executive David…
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We always like to kick off, apart from five yes/no questions, but the first question is always, did you choose the career, or did the career choose you?
It's probably both, isn't it? But, um, I feel in some ways I was condemned to being an engineer from a very early age.
I was one of those kind of people who took things apart, tried to put them back together again, always found there was something missing, it didn't quite always fit.
Was it parents' influence involved in this at all? Was it just, just yourself, just school or?
Less so school, but I, I had the kind of childhood where I was given a, a lot of opportunity to roam around and do, do things and, uh, experiment and make things and see if they worked.
Uh, and so I think through that I got to find out what type of engineering I might be interested in.
It was kind of making dams and breaking them and, uh, making go-karts and seeing how they worked.
But an, an awful lot of it was about kind of making and trying and testing, and so I think, yeah, probably I had to be an engineer.
We always like to kick off, apart from five yes/no questions, but the first question is always, did you choose the career, or did the career choose you?
It's probably both, isn't it? But, um, I feel in some ways I was condemned to being an engineer from a very early age.
I was one of those kind of people who took things apart, tried to put them back together again, always found there was something missing, it didn't quite always fit.
Was it parents' influence involved in this at all? Was it just, just yourself, just school or?
Less so school, but I, I had the kind of childhood where I was given a, a lot of opportunity to roam around and do, do things and, uh, experiment and make things and see if they worked.
Uh, and so I think through that I got to find out what type of engineering I might be interested in.
It was kind of making dams and breaking them and, uh, making go-karts and seeing how they worked.
But an, an awful lot of it was about kind of making and trying and testing, and so I think, yeah, probably I had to be an engineer.
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