What’s your background?

"I’m an architect by profession and am currently taking a year out. I previously worked in Glasgow before taking up a job as director at Seymour Harris in Leeds, mainly working on educational projects. I’m a registered client design adviser with the Royal Institute of British Architects and recently was a consultant with the government’s Partnerships for Schools project."

How has Interact membership helped you?

"I am a big fan of Interact, and what it can do for each of us as members. In my case, when I moved from Glasgow to Leeds, the Interact membership provided me with lots of valuable contacts in the local construction industry that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. The Leeds branch also made me feel very welcome, and helped get me established in the city quickly. Without Interact, this could have been a slow and painful process! Since then Interact has helped me build a strong and impressive network which has been a major source of information and leads for my work.

I have been working with  Education Projects for as long as I can remember and it is very easy to become ‘sectorised’ however having contact with other Professionals through Interact, who are working in varied sectors, has allowed me to keep in touch with what is happening in the other sectors such as Commercial Retail and Living.

The Leeds branch is a strong one with twenty five active members. As their chair, I am now encouraging them to interact with different branches as much as possible.

Partly because of the economy the level of interaction with different branches isn’t as high as it should be at the moment, but I am sure this will change and the website will certainly help this. We are now planning some exciting regional activities which we hope will encourage members to take advantage of Interact’s full potential."

Should Interact be trying to attract more younger and women members and would this encourage wider usage of the website?

"We need more younger members in Interact but this has always been a problem because membership is supposed to be for people at a senior level.
 
I do think this is a good time to push the website and encourage members to go online for information. Although lots of members use their secretaries to do things and would never dream of going online themselves!

The construction industry is predominantly male of course, and I don’t think specifically recruiting women is the right thing to do. It has to be about recruiting the right people and should have nothing to do with their gender."