meet stefan Hopwood Senior project manager
Hi, I’m Stefan Hopwood. I’m one of Ardmac’s Senior Project managers. I work in the exciting and fast-paced emerging Battery Facility sector. A hard work ethic has always been something I could rely on from a very young age, my dad working away during the week and Mum switching between day and night shifts at the Hospital while raising 3 children. My siblings and I knew nothing other than to ‘turn up’, ‘put a shift in’ and ‘do your best’. I was unexpectedly thrown into the real world at the age of 15 after finishing school earlier than most; no GCSE’s, no qualifications and not a whole bunch of hope from my peers…. one thing I did have in abundance though, was that hard work ethic.
In 2008, I started fresh on the other side of the world, Australia. It was challenging during the financial crash to land a construction role. I had to prove myself all over again. Hard work and my can-do attitude had me promoted to Assistant Site Foremen before long, supervising a group of carpenters and leading the day-to-day work activities across a housing development. After a few years in a Site Supervisor position, my global search for the next big challenge took me to the Middle East. At the age of 22, I moved to Dubai as a Construction Manager for arguably the biggest formwork specialist in the world, Doka. ‘Sink or swim’, that’s definitely how it felt after arriving on day 1 in the middle of a remote desert, managing over 150 non-English speaking operatives on a 500m bridge reaching over a wadi from mountain to mountain for the local military – this really was out of my comfort zone, but when I look back on it, it really helped me to appreciate thorough planning, looking ahead, anticipating the unexpected, and always having a plan B up my sleeve. Later in my career, I joined ISG, where I was exposed to some memorable projects for clients such as Microsoft, Google, Huawei, the biggest global event in ‘Expo 2020’, Sorbonne Uni artificial intelligence centres and many more. My construction experience and stakeholder management meant I developed into a more detail-orientated results- and client-focused
Early career
As soon as I was eligible to enroll at the local construction college at the age of 16, I chose a national vocation in carpentry and joinery, something I quickly fell for after feeling a great sense of pride in the work I was producing. Nearly 20 years on and I will never get bored of the feeling when you enter a finished space and think Wow!. After completing a 2-year apprenticeship course with distinction, I joined a small to medium size construction company, working nationally from Beverley to Cardiff, Reading to Manchester, Poole to Nottingham.
16
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online