Rob Everson is a Construction Manager at St. Modwen Logistics. Having joined the business in April 2022 an ex-Royal Marine, Rob balances his civilian career with duties as an army reservist. As Armed Forces Champion for St. Modwen, Rob plays an instrumental role in ensuring the business continues to develop its forces-friendly support. We sat down with Rob to find out more about his various roles and how he balances his responsibilities:
Where did your involvement with the military start and what interested you in construction and engineering as a career path?
My military career began when I joined the Royal Marines at the age of 17. After leaving the marines I made the transition into the Army Reserves and around the same time I started an apprenticeship with Network Rail, which was what initiated my interest in engineering. Subsequently, I moved to become a construction manager on the Thameslink project in London and this spurred me to develop my interest in construction and the built environment.
I was always keen to develop my formal and professional training as well as hands-on experience in the job, so I completed my bachelor’s degree in real estate management at Oxford Brookes University. It hasn’t always been easy juggling the day job with study and reservist duties, but this really helped put me on the path I wanted to be on in my career. As a result I was able to progress into project management, and subsequently construction management, which is when I joined St. Modwen.
What is life like as an army reservist?
Life as a reservist is good. Obviously, it can be difficult to manage work and my reservist commitments at the same time, but in many ways they complement each other. As I’m part of the national unit, my commitment is 19 days a year rather than the 31 for a local unit, and that includes a 2-week annual training camp, which St. Modwen have supported me with. I’m lucky to work for a business that is so supportive and St. Modwen offers additional paid leave for reservists so that really helps. The business has also been flexible when it comes to taking time off for training, for example when I attended a recent ski leadership course in Austria with the reserves. It takes a lot of managing between a family, a career, studying and everything else! Time management is key and I try and align things for maximum efficiency. For example, I’m now studying for a Master’s degree in construction and project management – it’s challenging but there are lots of areas of crossover with the day job and the work I do with the reserves around railway engineering, so they all support each other.
How did you come to join St Modwen?
Several years ago, I did an internship at Amazon who are large occupiers of warehouse space including a number of St. Modwen Logistics industrial units. That’s how I heard about St. Modwen as a developer and started to become interested in the industrial and logistics sector. I started looking into roles in logistics and luckily the opportunity at St. Modwen came along at the right time.
What is your current role and does your experience as a reservist help?
My current role is as a construction manager. Being in the reserves does assist with my civilian career in terms of leadership and other transferable skills from project planning to time management and delivery. The reservists are a huge network and on annual camp in October I was working with people from all over Europe from all different sectors. It helps to network, give work and get work, and I’ve been able to develop various useful contacts for our projects here at St. Modwen. It’s a different way of working and is a brilliant way of developing new skills and bringing back fresh ideas.
From your experience, what skills do military personnel bring to organisations like St. Modwen?
People who are ex-military and who have experience serving in the forces have so much to offer in civilian careers. The skills you learn are second to none, from organisation skills and networking to leadership and problem-solving. Whilst military qualifications might not directly link across to civilian qualifications, the skills and experience you gain are directly transferable and businesses can really benefit from helping ex-forces personnel make the transition across to civilian roles. The sense of camaraderie and can do attitude that you develop in the military is a real positive, and being able to bring that sort of ethos from the military into the civilian employment world is a win-win for businesses and those individuals looking to develop their careers.
It sounds like you are already spinning a lot of plates. What made you want to champion support for the Armed Forces at St. Modwen?
When I joined St. Modwen this was something I was really passionate about. The business had already signed the Armed Forces Covenant and had achieved Bronze accreditation under the ERS scheme, and as part of our Responsible Business Ambitions there was a real commitment to doing more. As someone who has taken the step from the military to a civilian career, I’m keen to use my experience and networks to help others do the same and make sure we have the right support in place.
Once I heard about the work that was already underway I approached our HR team and together we have now set up an internal working group to review our policies, develop our networks and sign up with partners such as the Careers Transition Partnership and Forces Family Jobs to advertise our vacancies to the forces community. Recently, we also carried out a staff survey to find out who within the business has an existing link to the military, and it’s been amazing to see how many veterans, military spouses and people with serving family members we already have within St. Modwen. There’s an existing community there and I’m personally really passionate about bringing that network together so that in the future we can offer mentoring and support to others joining our business.
Later this year, we’re planning to go for Silver status and hopefully it won’t be too long before we’re going for gold. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds and hopefully building our ex forces network within St. Modwen. The benefits speak for themselves and it’s a great opportunity to bring new talent into the business.I’m always happy to talk to anyone for a military background whether they are interested in a career with St. Modwen or just looking for advice on how to make the move into construction role. You can get in touch via the Resourcing team or find me on LinkedIn.
