Steve Miles, Director
Like most young men of my age, I left school at 16 without a care in the world and absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for a living. This being so, I headed off to Basingstoke Technical College to study A-levels in Applied Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science which, probably most unsurprisingly to anyone who knows me well, proved to be a total disaster.
I therefore left after a year and took a job with the Local Council, where I was initially employed as a Supernumerary; i.e I didn’t actually have a job. I was just there, alongside five others, to provide extra pairs of hands. Fortunately for me, I was assigned a role in the central print room which served all of the Council’s Technical Departments, and that brought my presence to the attention of the group of Civil Engineers who worked in the Highways and Drainage Departments. And, given that I already knew that water generally flows downhill, I was finally on my way.
After spending virtually the whole of the 1980’s at the Council, I then followed a good friend, who was also my original engineering mentor, to an Engineering Consultancy based in Winchester called Upton McGougan (UM), where I started as a Senior Technician. And there I stayed for a further 25 years, working my way through the system and eventually becoming Managing Director towards the end of the 2000’s. Early on in my tenure in Winchester I qualified as an Incorporated Engineer and joined the Institution of Civil Engineers (IEng MICE) and I still remain a member. Throughout this period I worked on and, latterly, oversaw the engineering design of a large number and diverse range of projects spanning all sectors of the Construction Industry.
Although trained as an Engineer, I worked out very early on during my Winchester years the critical importance of business development (BD) and what that entailed in terms of building and maintaining relationships, and this, in turn, led on to what happened next.
In 2014 Upton McGougan was acquired by Ridge and Partners where I stayed on for a further 2 and a half years in order to assist with the integration of the former UM teams. I then left in the summer of 2016 for what was originally planned to be a well earned rest before my wife and I headed off travelling around Australia and New Zealand at the start of 2017.
At this point, life had gone full circle and I was once again back at square one without either a care in the world or else even the semblance of a plan as to what I was going to do next. And then two rather strange and originally unconnected things happened.
The first of these was a former Building Contractor client from Winchester asking me if I could provide his business with some part time BD work and the second being a Commercial Surveyor friend of mine sending me the details of a dilapidated old pre-fabricated timber bungalow in a village close to Basingstoke which was in dire need of renovation and refurbishment, in order to make it re-habitable. With the help and assistance of my Contractor friend and alongside my wife, this exercise was subsequently undertaken throughout the course of 2017.
Being clad in rough-cut timber as well as timber-framed, the bungalow came to be referred to as “The Shack” during the course of its makeover and, when several other former clients also made contact with me about assisting them with their BD work, a new vehicle was required in order to facilitate this…
… and so became Theshack!
