Humanitarian profiles

Melvin Tebbutt
Construction Advisor, British Red Cross

I started working life as a construction management trainee with George Wimpey and Company and worked through an indentured rotational training programme that included site engineering, quantity surveying, office administration, procurement and store keeping, quality control, site and project management. My continued professional development and part time studies led to membership of the Chartered Institute of Building. My commercial contracting experience included both traditional and design and build forms of contracting working on pre contract tendering and construction management for residential, commercial and industrial building projects in and around the UK and Middle East.

After 18 years commercial experience I was looking for a different level of job satisfaction than I was getting dealing with the ultimate profit and loss contractual environment in commercial contracting. I have always enjoyed building but felt that I needed to see a different sort of benefit at the end of a project. In 1992 I saw a job advertised for a building manager to work in Botswana with Skillshare Africa for the Palapye Development Trust, managing and training the management team of a construction vocational training school. This was my opportunity to experience a different profit from my work.

After two years working with my team and handing over to my counterpart I was decided that I wanted to use my skills in the humanitarian and development sector. On my return to the UK I set about following up my ambition, I found a job back in commercial construction and started to pay off debts whilst working at broadening my skill set attending some RedR training in humanitarian action and water and sanitation and taking a masters at WEDC Loughborough University.

In 1994 the Rwandan crisis provided my first entry into the humanitarian sector with a mission for Concern to build operate and refugee camps in northern Burundi. This experience led me into the humanitarian sector where I have been able to utilise my project management skills in developing and implementing water, sanitation reconstruction and disaster mitigation projects in Africa, Caribbean, Latin America and the Tsunami Countries.

I have worked with a number of NGO's including Oxfam, Concern, GOAL, RedR and REDES, as well as DFID and UNICEF. My experiences have included both voluntary and paid work at various times, volunteering at RedR in London and with REDES in El Salvador, Skillshare Africa in Botswana. The types of work I have been involved with include water, sanitation and infrastructure in refugee and demobilization camps, winterization of buildings, reconstruction following natural disasters, disaster preparedness and community mobilization and development.

For the past three years I have been working with the British Red Cross as the construction advisor for the Tsunami Reconstruction Programme. I am now the shelter advisor supporting BRC programming and the IFRC in its shelter cluster role.

I often get asked by young engineers what they should do to get into the business. I always recommend that they get qualified with their chartered institution and learn the value of money from the commercial sector, where mistakes come from the profit margin, not from reducing the number of beneficiaries that get a house for example. This can also hold for other professions as well, because working in any sector commercially introduces a certain level of professionalism and responsibility for your actions; skills which are relevant in your humanitarian work where accountability is increasingly being measured. You should also think carefully about it before you do it, maybe sample it and see if it suits your personality and aptitude. There are more ways to support humanitarianism than by going out and doing it. Take your time and find the right approach that suits you.