Under the spotlight:
Stuart Ruddy, National Business Development Manager, Building Systems UK
Maybe you’d like to know why the construction industry is collaborating better than it ever has, or why the steelmaking industry is more innovative than a lot of people recognise.
Alternatively, perhaps you’d just like to know why I’d like to have had an alternate career path testing NASA rockets to destruction!
I'm a National Business Development Manager, engaging with clients, developers, architects and tier 1 contractors in order to identify project opportunities and secure specifications for Building Systems UK through the creation of value streams and supply chain agreements. My background in architecture allows me to get involved in the technical discussion, making my role wider rather than purely commercial.
As well as working with trade and industry bodies and working through government consultations, one thing I’ve really enjoyed is being part of the Supply Chain Sustainability School. That engagement gives us real insight into how our industry is trying to transform itself, and it’s important for us to have a voice in that forum.
I have always had a passion about working with my hands and being creative so during summer holidays from about the age of 14 I could be found on building sites working as a labourer hand mixing mortar for brick laying squads. Can you imagine a fourteen-year-old working on site now?
I started my professional career working in a private architectural practice as an architectural technician. From there, I joined Metecno Group as technical manager for their UK business Composite Panels Limited, before being promoted to group technical manager across 4 of the UK business’. After nearly ten years there, I spent seventeen years with Ash & Lacy Building Systems, joining to set-up their specification division, before working as commercial manager. When I found myself looking for a new opportunity in 2020, I reached out to Jo Evans and she brought me to Building Systems UK.
Really, my career has been about understanding people and relationship management. It’s been about the passion for managing at all stages in the construction project from conception through to handover, and its incredible, when you think about how many projects you're involved in over the space of your career.
The biggest achievement has influencing the business in the creation of value streams.
In my two-and-a-half years, Building Systems UK has gone from being quite a transactional business, in terms of focusing on its customer base, to one that has its own identity, is visible, and is actively influencing across multiple sectors in our industry.
De-risking construction is the aspect of DfMA (designing for manufacture and assembly) that I think will really win hearts and minds.
The UK construction sector is driving change from within and is embracing new technologies and off-site like never before, this will drive out waste through the efficient use of materials, it will help foster our adoption of the circular economy for building products and this can only be a good thing for our industry.
It's the ambition to decarbonise. We are often seen as a ‘big dirty’ industry, when in reality we’re far from that. The steel industry is the foundation of many other industries – across multiple sectors including the transport and energy.
If it isn’t ‘made of steel’ it was ‘made by steel’. Without steel there will be no energy transition. The steel industry wants to be part of the solution and part of that is the ambition to deliver net-zero steelmaking by 2050, or in Tata Steel’s case 2045.
The steel industry is far more innovative than people probably realise. A good example is OptemisTM carbon lite ‘insetting’ scheme. We’re actually ahead of the curve, and we are working with the construction industry to demonstrate the benefits and to fully realise the potential of OptemisTM Carbon Lite.
The good thing about the construction industry at the moment is that it’s really embracing its challenges. Everybody is trying to innovate at this point in time and what’s coming out the other side is really good for the future.
Embracing the work around construction platforms has allowed framework consortiums to form with many traditional competitors now working collaboratively to find innovative solutions which should accelerate change through standardisation.
For almost 38-years I practiced Shotokan Karate, moving from student to competitor to teacher and recently hung up my black belt for a more relaxed set of pursuits.
I go to the gym (infrequently!), enjoy dog walking and have been known to go Munro bagging here and there in the good weather - Munro bagging is the term used for people who will walk or hike into the wild places of Scotland! My big passion is travel, and we are working our way across a bucket list with Morocco my next destination of choice! Life is most definitely for living; I think is the answer to this question.
I’ve always wanted to do different things at different times in my life. If you’d asked me twenty years ago it would have been full time karate instructor but our country doesn’t support the martial art that well.
I’d love to have been a guy called Len D’Angelo. He was the test technician at Factory Mutual in Norfolk, who I met thirty years ago. His job was so varied that he could be setting up a fire test rig for insulated building panels, but the next he was impacting a petrochemical train car to determine if it would explode. This risks making me sound like a mad scientist! but I just thought the diversity in his job was phenomenal and it gave me a real appreciation upon the importance of testing.
My life could have taken a very different path because, at the age of 15, my mother believed I was going to become a priest!
Along with two friends, we were invited to a weekend retreat in Perth. Our parents were really excited and proud of us because we were being sent to the seminary to see if we were suitable to enter study towards the priesthood. We couldn’t understand their reaction as we just thought we were on a lads weekend!
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Building Systems UK technical team - Building Envelope
