In 2022, Heart of the City welcomed Sykes & Son Ltd, the UK’s oldest building contractor and a key supplier to the City of London Corporation on to our Climate for SME: 4 Steps to Action course.
Our team caught up members from the City of London procurement team and Rob Watkins, QHSE Manager at Sykes & Son Ltd, to ask about their journey to net zero, their insights, and the benefits they experienced on the course.
As a Health Safety and Environmental Manager at Sykes & Son Ltd, Rob has been instrumental in guiding the company in mitigating its carbon footprint. In addition to overseeing an impactful carbon reduction programme, he’s also achieved in implementing robust, eco-conscious standards within the business from the top down.
At our annual Climate Action for SMEs event at Mansion House last year, Director of Heart of the City, Maggie Berry asked Rob what made him start out on this journey, he responded: “As we all know, it’s the right thing to do, and there’s targets now that the government has set as well. But from a commercial perspective, we had a lot of the businesses and clients we work with asking us about Scope three emissions and how we were measuring them. We knew we were producing carbon, and we had this information, but we just didn’t know how to get to this tangible ending and give them the information they required!
So, as we were working with the City of London Corporation who were one of our clients, they directed us to the course and said this would help us on our journey. It was a bit daunting at first, but you quickly find that all the terminologies are there, and the calculations. Everything you need suddenly becomes apparent as to how you get to this end goal. What I found particularly useful is that you can engage with the Heart of the City team at any time!”
How did you manage the workload and manage the time needed to complete the course and the resources?
“Because of the way the modules are laid out, you can learn at your own pace. In module three where you do the data collection, you must look at it from a gathering information perspective, consider what information you need and who can help you with that process. You cannot do it on your own – there’s just too much information.
For me it was a case of engaging with staff early on and getting them involved, especially the top-level budget holders and the directors. I told them what we were doing and how we were doing it, and then we filtered that information down through the team. Because it came from the top, there wasn’t any resistance to it, and people were more willing to supply the information we needed.”
