6 minute read
Marc Burton MBE
Jersey-based Marc Burton MBE, executive director at the Garenne Group, was recently named Construction Manager of the Year at the prestigious Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) awards in London. The accolade follows his recognition in the 2021 New Year’s Honours list for his achievement in building Jersey General Hospital’s Nightingale Wing last year.
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The national CIOB awards are renowned as the most prestigious in the industry, allowing those working in the sector to recognise the very best amongst them. This year, 77 highachieving construction managers in the UK were named as finalists in the 10 categories, with Marc featuring in the healthcare category. On the night, having received the gold medal for that sector, he was named the overall winner. For Marc, it was a proud moment for himself, his team and his island: “I was very proud to represent Jersey’s construction industry and show what the island can achieve to a national audience. It was a great opportunity to promote Jersey and its talent. I may have been the face who won this award, but there was a huge team of people who made the Nightingale Wing project happen and I was certainly representing all of them. I THINK IT’S SO IMPORTANT TO INSPIRE THE NEXT GENERATION. PROMOTING THE INDUSTRY AS AN EXCITING AND VARIED CAREER IS A REAL PASSION OF MINE
“On a personal note, I was also delighted that I had a colleague there on the night supporting me, and he actually won the award in 2008. I attended with him that night so it felt like things had come full circle.”
Marc’s work and extreme dedication to the Nightingale Wing project were recognised with the award, but he said the process to the trophy was fairly demanding in itself: “The CMYA are the biggest awards in our sector, so it obviously has to be a fairly grilling process to get through. I initially submitted my entry in March and was then shortlisted and interviewed before being told that I was a finalist at the beginning of August.”
But for Marc, the effort to enter was worth the potential rewards – not for himself, but for the future stars of the industry in Jersey: “One of the main reasons why I entered in the first place was to try to help encourage more young people into construction. I think it’s so important to inspire the next generation. Promoting the industry as an exciting and varied career is a real passion of mine – it’s why I was involved with launching the ‘Design, Engineer, Construct!’ programme in Jersey, which succeeded in having construction and the built environment put on the school curriculum.
“Now that ‘Primary Engineer’ is also in place, the island has a careers map for young people from primary school all the way through to completing a masters degree at Highlands College. It’s a viable option for young islanders to stay here in education and have a pathway into an incredibly varied, fulfilling career. I really hope this award will help encourage others to follow in my footsteps and see how rewarding construction can be.”
CMYA
THE CATEGORIES
• Accommodation over four storeys
• Accommodation up to four storeys
• Healthcare
• Higher education
• Office
• Public and leisure
• Refurbishment and restoration over £10 million
• Refurbishment and restoration under £10 million
• Schools over £20 million
• Schools under £20 million
THE NIGHTINGALE WING PROJECT
On Sunday 29 March 2020, during a J3 board meeting, the Garenne Group decided to offer Jersey’s government the benefit of its partner, Sir Robert McAlpine’s experience in building the Manchester Nightingale Wing. They certainly didn’t expect that on 4 May 2020 they’d be handing over the keys to a facility they’d built from the ground up. But that’s exactly what the States of Jersey had instructed them to do – commissioning a 180-bed field hospital to cater for the projected wave of Covid-19 cases in the island.
It’s an unprecedented achievement in the Channel Islands, and indeed the Jersey Nightingale Wing itself was an anomaly compared with its UK counterparts. While the emergency hospitals throughout the UK were built in existing facilities such as conference centres and entertainment venues, Jersey’s was built on a greenfield site with a host of added infrastructure demands.
But for Marc, the decision to put the hospital at Millbrook was certainly the right one: “When we first started looking at the project, we narrowed the potential sites for the Nightingale Wing down to a shortlist. While places such as Fort Regent would have seemed an obvious candidate, there was a host of reasons why it wasn’t suitable. When I spoke to stakeholders and realised that any site had to be within a four-minute ambulance ride of the hospital, the decision was very easy. Luckily, I had a relationship with the owner of the site which meant that he supported us using his land for the purpose.”
With the sign-off from Jersey’s emergency council in place on 8 April, Marc and his team were ready to start the build just a couple of days later. For him, the entire experience was a credit to the island and the industry: “The reaction from the local construction industry was absolutely remarkable. In theory, and as a result of the industry lockdown, we had access to around 6,000 personnel from all sectors of the industry and we were overwhelmed with offers to help. Companies and individuals worked together to make sure the project could proceed and everyone was very happy to pitch in.
“While we were working hard on site, we had a huge amount of support from islanders, from catering to practical help. One of our suppliers ran a competition where children drew rainbows and every single one of the 541 workers on site was given a picture. We displayed them in the staff entrance as a ‘wall of hope’ to motivate the healthcare staff who would be working in the facility.”
With that team spirit, the hospital was built in just 25 days – something Marc is quick to credit to everyone involved: “I may have received the accolades for this project, but I didn’t build the Nightingale – it was a significant achievement for the whole team. We might have been a disparate bunch of individuals but we had one common objective and we achieved it.”
The Nightingale Wing was complete by 4 May 2020 and was on standby throughout the Covid crisis. By the spring of this year, with the pandemic response under control, it was decommissioned, allowing the area to return to its previous status as a playing field. The construction aimed to leave the ground able to return to its original state, but the project has certainly left a permanent mark on those who worked on it.
