Paul Connolly

I lead our UK Real Estate Cost Management team. This involves creating an ambitious journey plan for the business unit, clearly setting out our standards for service excellence and client experience. I aim to create an environment where we attract the best talent and our people can develop and flourish.

I joined Turner & Townsend in 1993 as a graduate from Kingston University. I was appointed Managing Director of our UK cost management team in November 2013. Since then, I’ve delivered major projects throughout the UK and have undertaken global and regional key account management roles on programmes for clients including Barclays, BP and Royal Bank of Scotland.

I’ve worked on performance improvement and portfolio management commissions for Barclays and AstraZeneca and am currently leading a transformation programme to digitalise our service delivery model.  

Q. What attracted you to join Turner & Townsend?

A. The people and culture. I was fortunate enough to join an ambitious team of just 25 people in our London office in 1993. That team was really motivated by making the difference to client outcomes on every commission they worked on.

Fast forward over 25 years and a number of those individuals are leading our global business and that high performance culture remains a key principle of what differentiates Turner & Townsend from its competitors.

Q. How do you contribute to Turner & Townsend making a difference?

A. One of the key aspects of my role is to make sure our teams are clear on the standards expected of them – both in terms of technical excellence and behavioural capability.

It may appear to be an over simplification but supporting our teams to do a great job and fulfil our client promises is the most important part of our service. In the current market, where our competitors struggle to do the basics, great delivery is a differentiator.

Q. How do you see your career progressing at Turner & Townsend?

A. Looking to the future, there is clearly a wide range of new and different types of skills that built environment professionals will need to develop, to respond to the industry’s key issue of poor productivity.

One of my current roles is to work with the UK Board to define our future people and systems capabilities. This is likely to require more collaborations with other organisations such as SMEs and universities to get the best project outcomes for our customers