Roy’s story is a real rag to riches tail from living in the old Salford docks to MBE. Roy left school at 15 after what he described as a bog-standard education having spent his time enjoying football and cricket in his youth. His deep passion for Manchester United is shown in his writing as 6 of his 20 books are about his beloved club. Roy’s writing initially started a side hobby on a Manchester United football forum while working in the ‘monotonous’ payroll department.
He strongly believes in personal management and spoke about how he would communicate with the highly skilled members of the team in his next job at Seddon construction, getting an insight into the issues they were facing and help to resolve these issues finding it beneficial to manage the worker rather than take a site management approach.
The importance of youth is another topic Roy spoke on as he was aware of the huge number of full-time students in construction and the lack of apprenticeship opportunities for these individuals. Roy is the lead for apprenticeship and training for ages 14-19 in the UK for construction with current his employers Seddon employing 50 apprentices annually. The “four A’s” Roy implements into recruitment assessment are; attendance, attitude, ability and ambition in that specific order finding these attributes from an employer’s perspective beneficial to the company. This investment in youth is also seen in the science industry by the Scottish government stating a comprehensive standard for careers guidance should be formed from employers, local authorities and skills development Scotland in their developing the young workforce annual report.
In 2008 Roy received an MBE for his services to the construction industry described how he applied hard word, determination and resilience to drive and achieve in life.
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