A8 Owners Daily duties.....

[Architex_mA8tey]

My earliest job of interest after the almost essential paper round when I was a lad was actually valeting cars at the local Audi & VW dealers which was where I first got interested in Cars. I then progressed to "the art of buying auction cars, doing them up and selling them on for a profit" as soon as I could drive. Other car related activities were Stock Rod racing (3 litre Capri stock cars) and Rallying in such cars as Mk 1 Escorts, Mk2 Escorts and Sunbeam Ti's.

My "proper job" background (as the name suggests) is Architecture. After I qualified I worked for a few Architects practices both small and large (including working on such varied buildings as Worcester & Gloucester Cathedrals and the restoration and conversion of the Hoover building on the A40 as you come into London from Oxford. I then set up my own practice specialising in residential Architecture and house type/house layout design, we also specialised in thatched properties early on. I still have a business in this area to this day mainly designing house types for National and Luxury House Builders the latter of which gets me involved in some interesting projects!

It was Architecture that led me back towards cars when I did some Architectural work for a funeral director who one day offered me his fleet of limos and a rolling contract to hire them back to him to do all his funerals (and his weddings he had booked for the weekends) and so that became an additional business. We did some 3500 funerals over the following 5 years and I really must write a book about that whole adventure sometime!

I have a low boredom threshold with work and started up a national loft conversion business whilst doing architecture and at our busiest we were starting 12 new conversions a week so it was a pretty busy time! They were very upmarket hi-spec conversions with many energy saving features and build times/disruption were minimized by making the roof window openings and taking everything in through the roof and only opening up for the stairs at the last possible minute. We also did truss rafter conversions when nobody else was offering this and used "kitchen planner" type 3D software to help show clients what their conversion would actually look like.

When I sold that business to a larger building company I made a bit of money so I invested in some property which I now rent out and which will hopefully act as a pension fund in coming years. At that point I had been dealing with Velux roof windows whilst doing loft conversions and they were looking for someone to set up their Architectural binder and CPD program for Architects and Specifiers so I worked for them for 6 years. I think in the busiest year we did 240 seminars and I personally gave 120 of them!

I enjoyed the variation/interest of working with a product manufacturer in the Building industry and went on to work for many big names including Knauf Plasterboard (House Builder national agreements), BuildStore (Developing a National Self Builder Offering), and Corus Steel (now Tata) dealing with National Builders Merchant Groups. I also sat on the Exec of the UK Timber Frame Association for a couple of years and spent a couple of years between the UK and Canada involved with that.

Nowadays I am running the Architecture business, an Internet B2B and Ticketing business, and am also a Director in a business that provides low energy ventilation and heat recovery systems (design supply and install etc) to residential properties throughout the UK and Ireland. Who knows what the heck I will be doing next . . . . .