Engineer Adam Jeffery MCIOB has spent the past decade working in three global cities: first in London, then in New York, before returning to his native Melbourne. He tells Rod Sweet about these three very different construction cultures.
Adam Jeffery has seen plenty of the construction planet. After obtaining an engineering degree from Melbourne’s RMIT University in 2011, he worked for several years as a civil engineer in Melbourne before coming down with a condition that afflicts many young Australians: itchy feet.
He came to London aged 25, where he found a job with Balfour Beatty in May 2014, rising to the position of senior quantity surveyor.
Over the next five years, he worked on projects including student accommodation at the Royal College of Music, the refurbishment of Euston Station, phase 2 of Lewisham Gateway, and Abbey Wood Station at the end of the south-east spur of the Elizabeth Line, then known as Crossrail. He describes the latter as his first major project.
It was a tumultuous time for UK construction. Balfour Beatty began posting large, yearly losses in 2014, and Carillion had begun its increasingly hostile bid to take Balfour Beatty over. Balfour Beatty meanwhile had begun the process of selling its professional services arm, Parsons Brinckerhoff, prompting a bidding war between Atkins and Canada’s WSP. WSP eventually prevailed.
Then Carillion went bust in January 2018, owing close to £7bn.
“It was an eye-opener, coming into this situation from a relatively quiet company in Melbourne,” he says.
At the encouragement of one of his managers, Jeffery became a member of CIOB during this period.
Stuck on the 29th floor
While in London, Jeffery met his partner, another Australian. The couple fancied seeing more of the world before settling down with kids. Jeffery was minded to try the Gulf region – Dubai, Saudi Arabia or Qatar. His wife liked the idea of New York. “So, we compromised and went to New York,” he chuckles.
Through a contact, he began working for Mace in New York in November 2019 as a senior cost manager, working on store new-builds and renovations for Tiffany around the country.
“Even though the basic structure is the same, the terminology, rules and regulations are different, so you have to learn the jargon and procedures.”
“People ask me which I liked better, London or New York? But it’s hard to say, because a few months after I got to New York, the Covid pandemic broke out,” he recalls.
New York State recorded its first Covid case in the first days of March 2020. On the 22nd, the state’s sweeping stay-at-home order came into force. All non-essential businesses had to close. “It was that stage when nobody really knew what was going on,” he says.
He and his wife were stuck working from home in a small one-bedroom apartment on the 29th floor. Jeffery would take the stairs to get food because only one person could use the lift at a time.
Active shooter protocol
Working for Balfour Beatty had given Jeffery the taste for bigger building and infrastructure projects so, when he met the president of local contractor MLJ Contracting at a networking event, and MLJ offered him a job as a project manager, he accepted.
His first project, starting in July 2020, was upgrading 12 apartment buildings of between 12 and 15 storeys on Coney Island for the New York City Housing Authority.
Coney Island had been hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. MLJ was to provide structural reinforcement and flood resilience measures, including new mechanical and plant rooms that could run off-grid.
The work was considered essential, so he was glad to be back in the office every day. He had to hire around 15 project staff and devise and implement strict Covid site safety measures, such as the use of masks and temperature screening.
He also had to write up an ‘active shooter protocol’ because gang-related gun violence can happen frequently in Coney Island, as he found when the site had to be shut down because of shooting nearby.
His project was spread over five city blocks, making it more vulnerable than a single, hoarded site. Over three years, such incidents would temporarily shut the project down 10 times. “Growing up in the country outside Melbourne, I wasn’t used to that,” he says.
Similarities and differences
Family reasons drew Jeffery back to Melbourne at the end of 2024, and he now works for Kane Constructions.
Looking back at his time in London and New York, he relayed some of his impressions of the industry culture. New York’s payment culture was the most hard-nosed, he said. Contractors and subcontractors both had a hard time getting paid.
New York also seemed more relaxed with some health and safety issues, such as the use of ladders, which are avoided in the UK and Australia. London had the most overt focus on health and safety.
“The main thing I’ve noticed is that, irrespective of country and an individual company’s culture and type of work, you’ll have some great people, some OK people and some people you’d rather never see again.”
Asked if he had any advice for others interested in using their skills to see the world, Jeffery said: be open to learning. “Even though English is spoken in all three countries and the basic structure of the construction business is the same, the terminology, rules and regulations are different, so you have to learn the jargon and procedures.”
Asked if he planned to move again, he said: “Probably. Ask me again in five years.”
