Employee aims for further progress

LAST year s Employee of the Year has already been promoted once – and looks set for a further step up before his 12 months reign is over. Former Longsands pupil David Ginn, 36, from Little Paxton, was a site manager for Amber Homes (St Ives) plc when he

LAST year's Employee of the Year has already been promoted once - and looks set for a further step up before his 12 months' reign is over.

Former Longsands pupil David Ginn, 36, from Little Paxton, was a site manager for Amber Homes (St Ives) plc when he won the award last November.

He is now senior site manager overseeing all four of the sites on which the company is currently working - in Sandy, Little Eversden and Long Road and Scotland Road, in Cambridge.

"Other sites are coming up around the county that we are in the process of buying and planning," he told The Hunts Post. "The business is thriving."

Not content with his new position, David is aiming for the post of contracts manager in the autumn, and will be starting a Level 5 national vocational qualification course to tick the professional box for it.

"The award has opened up quite a bit for me, because I'm given more responsibility. I would have had the opportunity anyway, but this has allowed me to progress more quickly.

"I think the secret is that I'm very enthusiastic and my boss, Neil Roe, the managing director, trusts me and I trust him. He took a bit of a gamble taking me on seven years ago with no formal training, and I like to repay that trust by doing a good job.

"One of the things is that I'm not afraid to ask questions, even if they seem foolish ones. That's better than thinking I know and making an expensive mistake. It's a very complex job that we do, and the regulations are changing all the time. We have to be sure we know what we're talking about to comply with the law.

"And Neil will always back my decisions, too. If I tell someone to knock down a wall and rebuild it because it's not good enough, he'll be behind me."

David admits that he was far from a model pupil at Longsands. "I spent more time skiving than going to school," he said. "If I'd put as much effort into learning as I did in avoiding lessons, I'd have been a Grade A student." Instead he drove fork-lift trucks and lorries before joining Amber Homes in January 2000 and never looking back.

David prides himself on running tidy, safe and efficient sites. He has set his sights on a Top 100 site managers award from the NHBC, the National House-Building Council, that provides warranties on new dwellings. But he may have to wait a while.

"The award is based on recommendations from NHBC inspectors, but they seem to be changing all the time at the moment, so I can't build up a track record. But that's my goal.