Steven Thomson

I started working for Robertson Construction Central East in April 2019, specifically to oversee a contract that RCCE had been awarded with NHSL to deliver a number of projects at the St Johns Hospital Site in Livingston.

The largest of the projects was a New Build Short Stay Elective Centre to the rear of the existing Hospital building, a project in the the region of £80-90m. We were appointed as PSCP on the project at the pre-construction stage of the job and we have worked alongside NHSL & their Project Management team to try to develop the Client Brief and through the various NHS & Government approvals. I was involved extensively with my Design Team in engaging with the NHS & each of their Departments to develop the Designs via a number of workshops and public engagement's to allow them to submit their papers for outline & Full Business case approvals.

I was also involved with delivering a full refurbishment & New extension to the existing A&E Department within the Hospital assisting the Project Team in delivering a very challenging project due to phasing, working alongside the client to ensure the Department was operational during the works.

As well as new build projects I have been involved in a number of refurbishment and extension projects, including extensive alterations and extensions to an existing warehouse to form a new cardboard factory, a project in the region of £25-30m, working closely with the Operations team through pre-construction through to completion on site.

I have also been involved in a number of smaller projects, circa £5-10m for private clients ranging from Ministry of Defence, to pharmaceutical companies providing support to the site teams & managing the Design Team & all design related elements throughout the projects.

More recently I have been involved in a variety of projects with the University of Edinburgh across their wealth of properties in and around Edinburgh, ranging from refurbishments of listed buildings to large extensions of new super computer facilities with project costs varying between £13-45m.

I started working for Graham Construction in March 2016, specifically to over see a contract with Hub South East for the Lothian Bundle Projects. These were Design and Build contracts for the NHS / Local authorities which included erecting 3 New Build multi-use facilities across Edinburgh and West Lothian. The projects were between £7-13m in size & were funded as a joint venture between NHSL and the local Authorities (City of Edinburgh Council & West Lothian Council).

The projects provided both Health & community services, including GP & Dental Practices, sports halls, library's, community centres & Child support Health Services.

Across the projects, we used a variety of construction materials, including concrete frame, steel frame, SFS, facing brick, feature PC concrete & a number of cladding and curtain walling materials which allowed me to build up a wealth of knowledge across various construction materials, detailing and erection techniques.

Each project started on site in May 2016 and ran alongside each other with staggered completion dates, the last of which ended in October 2017.

My initial role in these projects was to carry out a technical review of all contract proposal drawings and offer up any ideas on Value Engineering / comment on the buildability of details. Following this review I was then tasked with working alongside the Commercial team, pulling together subcontract work packages including Contractor Design Packages. My role also included chairing and running bi-weekly design team meetings on site and managing the Information release from the Design team. During the contracts I managed my time between the 3 projects, attending site, assisting the project managers with their management and co-ordination of each subcontractor. I have also been involved in managing the RFI/ TQ process with the design team throughout projects & co-ordinating the Reviewable Design process with the client.

Following the completion of the bundle projects I was involved in a refurbishment project of Andrew Melville Hall in St. Andrews for the University of St. Andrews. This was a Grade A listed student residence building at North Haugh in St. Andrews. This was a traditional contract with a value of circa £8m for the strip out and re-instatement of 274 bedrooms and common areas. My main duties were assisting the site team with reviewing all information, commenting & managing the RFI & TQ process. I was also involved in pulling together packages with the commercial team for CDPs and subcontract packages.

My final project for Graham Construction was working on another refurbishment and New Build project with the University of St. Andrews in Guardbridge, just on the outskirts of St. Andrews. This included an element of refurbishment to the existing Eden Mill Gin distillery building along with a small new build entrance block.

A summary of my duties at Springfield included taking the existing Springfield house type range (and designing a number of new house types) redesigning them to make them compliant with the latest building regulations (obtaining type approval) & also make them more economical to build. Using AutoCAD, I reconfigured each house type & prepared a set of planning presentation drawings & then progressed to further detailed design to take them to Building warrant stage. I was involved in preparing a standard template for the house type designs, working closely with the construction team to prepare a comprehensive package of information for each of the house types. This included in depth discussions with the Timber Frame company to ensure that each of the houses were fully designed, checked and signed off prior to Kit delivery on site. Part of my remit was to look at renewable sources & ways of taking the current house type range to comply with the new building regulations & managing the Technical specification to reflect these findings.

A summary of my duties at Yeoman McAllister Architects included leading a team of individuals, running large & small scale residential and non-residential projects. This included meeting the client at the initial phase of the project, preparing feasibility drawings, based on their brief & then preparing the drawings & submitting applications to local authority to obtain the statutory Planning & Building Warrant approvals, liaising and co-ordinating all members of the Design Team. Once the statutory approvals were obtain I would then manage the production information/ construction status process & interact with the Client & Contractor during a value engineering stage to ensure that they had all the relevant information to complete the build & that the Client was getting value for money.

During the construction phase of the project, my role was to attend site and project team meetings together with inspecting quality of workmanship on-site. I attended each of the sites and worked from there at least once a week liaising directly with the Site team and assisting with any design issues. On occasion, with more challenging projects, there was a need for me to be in attendance on site more often to help the Site team work through any issues and problem solve at the coal face. I was based on site for the duration of the construction works for these projects, working directly with the Site Manager.