It’s Nurturing November in Severn Trent Services, where people are encouraged to take advantage of mentor sessions with the senior leadership team to help nurture their careers.
Charlie Anderson is a highly experienced water industry expert and a service delivery lead at Oren Environmental. He tells us a little about his extensive career journey so far, including what makes him tick, what ticks him off, and how he’s helped nurture the careers of people who’ve worked for him over the years.
While most of my friends went off to university, my family encouraged me to start working and earning, so I began a Severn Trent apprenticeship as a teenager—that was over 16 years ago.
However, the company paid for me to do a HND in Civil Engineering, two ONCs in Mechanical Engineering and Water Engineering, and various NEC 3 projects and contracts accreditations, so while I may have missed out on university life, I haven’t missed out on getting my qualifications.
I lead a 44-strong team that manages the day-to-day operations and maintenance of some of our biggest contracts.
For example, the Coal Authority contract, where the team proudly manages around 76 mine water treatment schemes across the UK on behalf of the Coal Authority.
I also look after the design and delivery of new project work that we win.
We’re a 24/7/365 operation, so the morning is usually spent catching up with my operations and project managers to see where we are with things, whether anything happened overnight, where we are with our KPI measures, and if there are any risks I need to be aware of.
The afternoon is typically spent planning projects and checking in with various stakeholders, from customers to suppliers.
I spend about 15% of my week on-site with my delivery teams, and the rest is split between my office in Mansfield and customer offices. While I enjoy being actively involved with the operational teams on site, I have to be less hands-on with the day-to-day activities as a leader.
I love the autonomy I have at Oren Environmental. I can make decisions—and quickly—to do what’s right for the customer. I’m probably at my best when I’m helping to solve problems. This job definitely allows me to draw from my operational experience and come up with bespoke ways to address the bespoke challenges our customers have.
But as a leader, the best thing is nurturing talent within the team. I love seeing the team in action on Tuesdays when they run the operational meetings brilliantly, and I get to take a step back.
I’m a great believer in promoting from within, and so far, I’ve helped around six people secure promotions.
Time management is a challenge. In operations, you deal with many unexpected events and manage many internal and external stakeholders.
For example, this week began with a rising mains burst threatening to flood a strategic rail route. An unforeseen incident like this will change the shape of my week, so I need to be prepared for that.
To overcome this, I split my days into reactive work, which I do in the mornings. The mornings are typically a flurry of activity where you’re juggling lots of balls and where people often have more energy. The afternoons are then freed up to do more proactive, strategic work.
I write down everything I need to do in my online diary to allocate time to the people and projects that need me. But here’s a little tip for avoiding ticking off an operational person: don’t put non-urgent meetings in their diary for a Monday morning!
Trust your people by equipping and empowering them to do the right thing. I work in a high-growth area, and we could only achieve our success by giving people the autonomy to do right by us and the customer.
I believe that if you provide the proper support for your people and explain the bigger, strategic picture, you can be confident that they’ll always try to do the best thing. Everyone can make mistakes, but I always say that if you talk me through the rationale for doing what you did, we can learn together and improve as an organisation.
It has to be the 2019 Doncaster floods, when a month’s worth of rainfall fell in one day, threatening many people’s lives and destroying properties and infrastructure.
I had the privilege of being part of a group of people from the Environment Agency, the Coal Authority, emergency services, councils, and residents who were helping to remove the flood water and set up refuge centres.
While the circumstances were horrific, it was an honour to help a local community that really needed support—something I’m still very passionate about.
Oren Environmental is part of Severn Trent, one of Britain’s largest water companies. We specialise in nature-based solutions to managing water, like reed beds and sustainable drainage systems (SuDS), for organisations nationwide.
