We are delighted to honour Martin, whose unwavering dedication and exceptional service have been a part of our success. His journey with us has been marked by hard work, passion, and numerous contributions that have greatly enriched our team. Discover more about Martin’s time with us below.
When asked by a careers officer back in 1987 what my ambition was, I stated that “I never want to sign on the dole,” and I have achieved that ambition so far.
On leaving school in 1987, I became an apprentice plumber at Wolverhampton Council, carrying out plumbing repairs to domestic properties. I loved my time there and gained a city and guilds and advanced craft plumbing qualification. After a few years doing this, I applied for a job within the asbestos removal division, where I worked for several years with a great bunch of lads as an asbestos removal supervisor. Not only was I working with a great team, I also met my wife, who was working in the offices at the time. We have been together almost 30 years, we live in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, and have 3 children and 5 wonderful grandchildren.
My boss at the time left and set up his own company in 1997 and asked me to join him. It was with some trepidation that I left the council, and after several years working with him, I realised that I had made a mistake due to incidents that included bullying, so I started to look for alternative employment. In 2001, I took an agency role with Integra, where Dan Allman was a senior manager/director, and after 3 months, I was offered a permanent position, and I have been working at Severn Trent ever since.
My first role at Integra was fitting and maintaining water meters across the Midlands and North Wales. Subsequently, I was carrying out legionella remedial plumbing works across Severn Trent sewage treatment plants for over 3 years. The metering side of Integra was sold off in 2012, and as I had been laterally working on legionella remedial works, I was not subject to the TUPE transfer and was retained by Severn Trent Costain, now known as Severn Trent Services.
As there were no plumbing works available, I became a DIFS technician and was deployed to annually test some 5,500 fire hydrants on MOD sites across the country with my colleague Ben, who also transferred from Integra on what is known as the Aquatrine contract. I have also helped out on meters, e-mags, and loggers, which has entailed fitting, maintaining, and verifying these units. I have recently opted to become a H&S coach within the network optimisation team.
I am given the autonomy to plan my own work based on my knowledge of the 130+ MOD sites that I look after. Both Ben and I live in the West Midlands, and our work is all in the East of the Country, as far south as Dover and as far north as Northumberland. I feel empowered to make decisions and am trusted to do the right thing. I genuinely feel that I am listened to and that I have voice. With regards to the time I have spent on the fire hydrant project, it has involved the majority of my working time away in hotels as there are no sites close to where I live. This brought on a 3-month period of sickness due to stress about 6 years ago, and I have to say Severn Trent were magnificent with the help, support, and counselling given to me. I will be forever grateful for that support, which has led me to being able to work compressed hours, which therefore has given me better work and homelife balance.
When I first started the MOD project, the data was a mess, and there was no structure to the testing regime. As a result of this, I rebuilt all of the capture sheets, created spreadsheets with all the hydrants mapped and renamed, and created a schedule of works, which is still used now. I moved the work from paper to electronic for ease of reporting and have pushed for upgrades and changes to some of the hydrants to negate various health and safety issues. Considering that I work on the tools, I feel that over the years I have played a large part in helping to manage the project in conjunction with my line managers.
When working on Legionella, we had a brilliant team. The camaraderie was amazing, and I made lifelong friends. We all had a common purpose, worked brilliantly together, and ran a quality service while having a great laugh at the same time. I have worked alongside Ben for the last 12 years on an almost daily basis testing the fire hydrants, so you cannot help but to build a bond with your work colleague and look out for each other. We have the odd disagreement but couldn’t ask for anybody better to work alongside, and I class him as a great friend.
I wish I had taken myself out of my comfort zone and looked at the possibility of promotion even outside of my current scope of knowledge.
Dare to dream. There are a multitude of opportunities if you just look for them, and at the very least you will have job security working for a company that strives to do the right thing day in and day out.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today, Martin. We look forward to many more years working with you!
