In this series, we find out more about some of the key people who give their time to support the JCT Young Professionals Group (JCT YPG). We will look at our interviewees’ background and how they got into the industry, the importance of their contribution to JCT YPG specifically, and gain their views on JCT’s wider role within the industry.

Thomas Shanks 

JCT: Thomas, tell us a bit about your background. What is your current role, and why did you decide on a career in the construction industry?

I began my career as a quantity surveyor and ended up specialising in data centres, bouncing between consultancies and contractors with a spell on a theme park in Saudi Arabia. Before long, I had become interested in contractual matters which led me towards construction law more generally.

Now I work at a large MEP contractor, providing strategic commercial and legal advice to the project teams, have completed the King’s College London Construction Law and Dispute Resolution MSc, and have started the Cambridge Construction Engineering Masters MSt programme, which looks at innovation and leadership in the industry.

My father followed a similar route of quantity surveying to contract management, and I did resist construction initially, but there was no escape!

JCT: How did you first come to be involved with JCT’s Young Professionals Group? Why do you think it is important to be involved with the new focus group? 

I discovered the group through independent research but was always very keen to be involved. I think it is vital that the next generation of construction professionals are given every opportunity to learn. I remember times in my career early on when I was very hungry to learn and became frustrated when learning opportunities were thin. I would not have other enthusiastic young professionals experience the same thing.

JCT: Can you tell us about any specific work you’re currently doing that has any association to JCT and its contracts (e.g. any case studies/webinars/podcasts/blogs/vlogs)?

Around 90% of my working day is spent looking at JCT contracts or teaching our commercial teams about how the contract works.

JCT: Do you have any personal career highlights so far?  

I have been fortunate to be involved in some really interesting deals and projects. The negotiations for a big data centre in Germany stick out to me as a particularly good learning experience. The theme park in Saudi Arabia was also really cool; at one point I was responsible for the contracts for a record-breaking rollercoaster.

JCT: What are you most proud of about the construction industry as a whole and where do you think it most needs to improve? 

Construction is inherently a testament to the ability of people to come together and produce something bigger than the individual. For an industry with such a low barrier to entry, we produce truly spectacular marvels of the world; a good construction project is, in my view, a great indicator that society is not just functioning but thriving.

We could do with shaking the adversarial nature of the industry, and I think that will come from better education at all levels and more assumption of risk further up the supply chain, as well as at funder level.

JCT: Does JCT and the Young Professionals Group have a wider role to play in the industry beyond producing contracts? 

Absolutely. JCT contracts set the standard for allocation of responsibility in the UK and are the contract most young professionals will first encounter (that or the other one). That role in the industry can be exploited to drive better practice, and that familiarity among young professionals can be used to sow the seeds of change in the future leaders of construction.