As part of Armed Forces Week 2023, we spoke to a number of our Armed Forces personnel across Morgan Sindall Construction. In this interview we spoke to Guy Kenevan, assistant site manager working as part of our team in the South.
Guy spent 22 years in the Armed Forces as a Royal Marines Commando from April 1997 to April 2019 achieving the rank of WO2, Squadron Sergeant Major. As part of his work, he qualified as a boat specialist, specialising in all types of raiding and assault craft, beach reconnaissance, obstacle clearing, and covert troop insertion. He completed numerous operational tours including those in Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, to name but a few.
“I’d completed a few jobs from my teens into my early 20’s before I joined the Royal Marines aged 26, for me, there was no other service that appealed to me, I took the plunge, completed my 32 weeks training, and embraced all that it was to be a Royal Marine."
When he left the Forces in 2019, Guy had lined up a role with a friend in the events industry, where he spent the Summer setting up barrier systems and planning public access routes for large events, such as festivals, sporting events and film premieres. However, as the pandemic hit in 2020 and events were cancelled, he was furloughed. One of his serving contacts, put him in touch with the Project Manager on a Morgan Sindall project that was being undertaken on a Tier 1 military base. They were looking for a person on the team who had experience, and an understanding of the military mindset processes, security protocols and to be able to deliver security briefs to civilian contractors – all things that Guy had undertaken in his military career and the rest they say is history!
Guy noted two similarities between the two industries:
“Communication skills are utilised for both roles. Guy said: “Everyone thinks the Armed Forces get results by screaming and shouting at people, and in some high-risk areas or roles, it is, but on the whole like in construction, your objective is to get the most out of people and to get them to work for you efficiently, productively and, most of all safely – and employing a range of communication styles helps this. The skills you’ve developed in the Armed Forces to speak to colleagues, the public or senior officers without a doubt are all transferrable into the construction industry.”
“Management of time, resources, budget, and people are also similar in the two industries and how these all come together to get a job done, it will all feel very familiar to anyone who is ex-Forces. Being able make a judgement call on what is a more important task to complete than another, ensuring you’re not wasting time or resources are all the skills I used during my time as a Royal Marine. It’s often something that those people serving don’t recognise in themselves, so don’t remember to sell yourself on these skills.”
“One of the strengths that you’ll bring to a team from your military career is the ability to be reactive and deal with change quickly (or fastballs as we used to refer to them). The Armed Forces teaches you to be reactive daily, so if something happens or doesn’t, you’ll already have had the training to deal with it quickly.”
And the differences between the sectors? “This one is probably a bit of both,” starts Guy, “the work routine can be similar, you’ll be working to a programme of works on site (which could be like a direct set of orders for exercises or operations in the Armed Forces which you will have to dissect and execute), and you’ll have structured routine of who, what, where and by when you need to achieve any given task by. But the difference might be the working day, in construction you’ll generally start and finish at the same time most days. In the Armed Forces you might work a long, full day, very long nights with little or no rest, a short one, a couple of hours mainly of sitting about waiting for a detail! A full, regular day was something to get used to.”
One of the best things about working in Construction?
“For me I’m home every night, I became a father a little later in life and one of my reasons for leaving the Royal Marines after completing my 22 years was that I wanted to be able to see my family more. I could have stayed, but the roles were around 250 miles from home, and I didn’t want to be a weekend dad. By the time my daughter was two years old during my time serving I had spent 16 months away from her in total of 24 and that was tough for me and my family.”
“Don’t get me wrong, the eb and flow of jobs in construction means that you may have one project that might be 50 miles from home and there might be some travel involved for a year or so, but then you can also end up on projects that are very close to home. I currently have a flexible arrangement so I can be home two days a week by 5pm to collect my daughter from after school club, while my wife is working. A lot of projects do offer flexibility on site now which wasn’t always the case, often project teams will discuss a routine that suits all at the start of a project.”
Guy’s top tips for those leaving the Armed Forces and finding your next role:
- Prepare a CV, make it your own and don’t copy and paste from others! You need to feel confident in what you’ve written and shared
- Take full advantage of the various resettlement courses and qualifications on offer – not all of them are available to you after resettlement. I had a job lined up for when I left the Armed Forces, but in reality, with the impact of Covid I should probably have taken up the opportunity for more training. I do have some qualifications, which will last me a lifetime – such as management training, but there were so many others on offer such as NEBOSH/Safety Advisor roles, project management etc you can do as a part of your resettlement package.
- Attend as many careers fairs as you can, and with a wide range of people and employers there – use them as a practice run for job interviews. It’s something you don’t have to do in the Armed Forces – to join the Royal Marines I had to attend a careers office, do 10 pull ups, a very brief interview on why I wanted to join, a few basic tests followed by a 3 day pass or fail thrashing at the Commando Training Centre and wait for my start date, not your typical interview (it’s a lot different now!) so practicing your interview techniques at these events will give you more confidence for the real thing.
- Really look at what your transferrable skills are. The things that make you human, easy to work with, dependable, those serving in the Royal Engineers for example will have transferrable technical skills but all those serving will have time management, planning, people and communication skills to their advantage, along with the camaraderie and sense of teamwork unique to the Armed Forces, which transfers very well into the construction industry when working together as a site team.
- Learn the hierarchy on site, a Senior Project Manager is similar to a Major, an Area Director is similar to a Colonel, etc, it helps settle into the role and industry when you understand better who’s who compared to your old structure. There will be plenty of people who will be able to help you do this, even if you describe a role to someone on site, they’ll be able to point you in the right direction. Surround yourself with people more experienced than you, soak up their knowledge like a sponge and ask questions, lots of them!
Find out more about Armed Forces careers
Guy's interview and others can be found in our Armed Forces booklet. Which also includes some of the advice compiled from our team for Armed Forces personnel seeking roles in the Construction industry.