Gillian Froud has joined leading national chartered surveying firm Bruton Knowles, moving from her position as Associate Director at Savills working in the Strategic Projects team, specialising in infrastructure and telecoms.
Gill will take on the new role of Head of Utilities & Infrastructure South at Bruton Knowles and will be based from the firm’s Gloucester office initially but will be opening up a southern region office with the team later this year.
She had spent some 19 years in her previous position – first working in the finance team for national homes, then moving on to telecoms and renewable energy projects, and finally heading up a specialist team of over 20.
Gill explains the reason behind the move: “Yes, there’s always a time when you are looking for the next challenge in your working life, where you can better deploy new skills and experience particularly in the super fluid and extraordinarily fast moving pace of the utilities and infrastructure sectors.
“Working environment and culture is also a focus for me now. Working with the right people that you can easily connect with and who understand what you want to achieve and will support you in how you want to go about it, is a priority. Meeting James Bailey and Nigel Billingsley and knowing that we shared very similar thoughts and ideas was key to the move. This business, this industry is all about people – team members and clients. Trust is built over time, hand in hand with consistently excellent delivery, and strong relationships are forged with like-minded team members clearly skilled in their role.”
James Bailey is Managing Partner at Bruton Knowles: “Our growth plans for the whole business this year are varied and operational on many levels and across all our National Teams. But our utilities and infrastructure (U&I) client base continues to expand and we continue to build greater experience and sought after expertise in the sector. This National Team is expected to deliver over 40% of overall turnover this year, based on our first 6 months of trading. By appointing firstly a Head of U&I Wales and now a Head of U&I South, I think we are making our plans quite clear.”
Gill continued: “I have some very clear goals in place for the next 12 months, and plan to cover a lot of ground. New ideas will look to streamline a number of processes while we need to continue to grow the team and cement our presence in the South with some strategic new client wins.”
Gill Froud joins Nigel Billingsley and Bill Simms who jointly Head up the National Utilities and Infrastructure Team North and Russell Davies, who has just joined the firm also in a new role as Head of Utilities & Infrastructure Wales.