In Your Shoes - Jay Gallagher

Monday – a new week!

Monday morning comes and I’m ready for the new week ahead!

I’m based at our office in Aberdeen, but no day is the same and I’m rarely in one place for too long. I could be meeting a healthcare team on-site one day in Inverness and meeting a client in the oil and gas sector the next day in Aberdeen.

We work with a variety of different sectors from healthcare and education to construction and manufacturing and pride ourselves on making sure all of our buildings are delivered on time and on budget. The turnaround of a modular building is up to 70% faster than traditional construction, getting a good understanding of our client's needs is important to us that is why we prefer to have face-to-face meetings So we can get a good feel for what is required and what challenges we may need to overcome so that we can deliver on time, on budget and on brief

Tuesday – project check-in.

Today I am checking in on a project we delivered recently for a gas company in Aberdeen. The customer has an existing office facility previously supplied by Portakabin but wanted to move to a stacked solution so they could use the upper level as an office and viewing platform for clients. Building the viewing platform would oversee the operational site. I love being able to take the client’s vision and make it into a reality! This is an important benefit of modular construction, we can increase, decrease, re-design and re-locate our buildings long after installation.

As I mentioned previously, no project is the same. During the pandemic, there was a requirement for the Peterhead power station to have some additional facilities due to an outage and an increase in staff. Due to the nature of the situation, timescales were critical. We had two weeks to deliver 11 buildings. As you can imagine this meant we had to work collaboratively across Portakabin to deliver this essential project, but as this is something we are used to doing, we delivered it successfully.

Wednesday – Networking, networking, networking!

Today I’m meeting with the Aberdeen Business Network. We meet fortnightly to discuss where we can support each other with our businesses and generally speak about what’s going on in Aberdeen.

I’ve been part of the group for two years and have built some great friendships and working relationships. From networking with this group, I have been introduced to many different sectors and businesses that we’ve been able to help with additional space requirements.

Thursday – Exhibition time

I attend a lot of exhibitions and conferences to make sure we’re meeting local businesses within the industries we serve with the view of helping them with their modular needs.

We use virtual reality to showcase our Portakabin buildings to potential customers. This gives them the opportunity to really experience the quality of what we can provide.

Recently at the Scottish Growth Gathering Conference and Expo, we had customers trying our VR headset.

Friday Night – Wind down for the weekend

After a hard day’s work, I am winding down and looking forward to the weekend ahead.

In my spare time, I love to go out on my mountain bike. My adventures take me all over the country. Last year I cycled the equivalent elevation of Africa’s second-highest mountain, Mount Kenya. That’s 17,056 feet! I raised £800 for the Gathimba Edwards Foundation who aim to provide as many Kenyan children as possible with the opportunity of a bright future. I’m quite competitive so this was the perfect challenge for me.