PEOPLE


10 MINUTES WITH: OLIVER ABRAHAM Technical Manager,XL Joinery


What is your current role and how long have you been doing it?


I am the technical manager for XL Joinery. I and my team manage design, specification, quality, compliance, and UK doorset manufacture. I have been with XL joinery for just over a year, but have worked in this role for about seven.


How did you get started in this industry? Just after I left school at 16, I saw an advert in the paper that said ‘Do you want to get rich?’ I thought to myself ‘yeah, who doesn’t?’. This took me into a six-year career within the UPVC home improvement industry, starting from ripping pages out of the telephone directory and dialling numbers, right through to managing installations. These were the real-life white gold days. I’ve always studied part-time, and at this point in my life I had just completed a violin making diploma, so with a love for timber and fine finishes, I made the jump to a family joinery business, making fine solid oak doors whilst managing their sales and installation. Timber manufacture has been at the heart of what I do ever since.


How did previous roles prepare you for this one?


I completed a part-time Craft and Design Masters degree in London, in what used to be the London College of Furniture. The day I finished, I had a job in the North East managing the design and development of timber and marble fire surrounds for a leading manufacturer. It was here that I made the leap from managing the manufacture of one- off bespoke projects, to volume manufacture and national distribution. This was probably the most important step in my career development.


Another role as the technical manager for joinery and hardware for a national builders merchants. The step-change here was moving from manufacture, to procurement, working with international manufactures to deliver a £450 million product portfolio.


What would you like to achieve in your role?


Continued product and process innovation will ensure that my team are delivering joinery products that people want in their homes, that builders want to fit, and merchants want to sell.


What has been the highlight of your career so far?


Seeing our products used. If I’ve turned on the TV and haven’t got to the remote in time, I’ll have to sit through the adverts. Quite often now, whenever a company wants to convey a family feel, selling bleach, or hoovers, or pensions, or pretty much whatever, behind the pristine actors and the well paid acting dog, in the background there will often be a product that I have developed dressing that perfect home. It gives me something to talk about. Right now, our doors are popping up all over the place.


What do you see as the main issues for builder’s merchants and the industry at the moment?


Construction is all about relationships, those between people and also those between components. As an industry, we have to always remember that the end product of our joint endeavours is new and renovated buildings. For many of us, paying for the building that we live in will take a lifetime and they will remain long after we are gone. This means that we have to maximise value and minimise environmental impact. These are the two biggest issues for our industry. The widespread use of BIM is bringing relationships closer together, realising efficiencies that deliver value throughout the supply chain.


What’s likely to keep you busy at the weekends?


I spend a lot of time relegated to the garden. I enjoy it. Maybe I should make use of the time to get my dog into acting. There seems to be a lot of them about.


If you’re at the bar – what are you drinking? Gin for me!


What’s your favourite book? Favourite film?


I’ve always loved Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo, I’ve read it many times, although, I’d say there has never been a decent film adaption of it. In business, I always recommend Clason’s The Richest Man In Babylon, it a very accessible personal finance book dating back from the American Wallstreet Crash.


If you could be a superhero, what super- power would you choose? It’d have to be dog whispering!


12


ON THE MOVE


• Digby Stone has appointed a new area business manager to help customers grow sales. Steve Clutterbuck has worked within the


merchant industry for over 20 years and brings with him a wealth of experience. He will be working with Digby Stone director Andy Williamson to help customers to help improve displays and delivering training to the teams to help improve product knowledge across the sector.


• Rob Richardson has joined the board of James Burrell Builders Merchants alongside directors Steve Richardson and Mark Richardson.


Richardson joined the company back in October 2012 where he began working in the yard at the company’s head office in Gateshead and went on to work in several areas of the business before being promoted to the board of directors. These areas include; branch sales, contract sales, policy management and trade collect sales development.


• Keeley Haines has been promoted to the position of national sales manager for British manufacturer, Kudos Shower Products Ltd. Haines joined the


sales team at Kudos just 15 months ago, coming with years of industry experience working with brands like Hansgrohe and Lecico Bathrooms. She now heads a team of 8 area sales managers at Kudos and reports directly to sales & marketing director Nick Graville in this new position.


• Dr Nina Cardinal has joined Hanson Cement as its new national technical manager. She heads up the division’s technical team, which offers customers advice,


information and support on all cement and cementitious issues.


Cardinal worked at Tata Speciality Steels for more than 20 years, latterly as technical director responsible for a 70-strong team, before joining the University of Sheffield as director of operations in the Faculty of Science in 2016.


www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net November 2019


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