George Pleasance
Associate Director
Cost Management
George has broad experience in both the private and public sector having worked on projects within the arts and culture, education, research, residential, retail and sports sectors which have been delivered deploying a range of procurement and contract strategies. George also has experience delivering design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA)and digital solutions.
George has been the lead cost and commercial manager on numerous large-scale projects and has managed teams for a variety of clients. In addition, he has also led the APC, CostX, Kreo and has successfully rolled out several best practice methodologies.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
The flexibility and freedom to challenge the norm. The ideology of larger firms being “If it’s not broke then don’t fix it” does not apply at K2. We constantly strive for improvement. We are our toughest critics and we constantly want to challenge our ideas in a constructive and productive manner and allow for innovation and successful change implementation in a flexible and agile environment.
What’s your best career advice?
The saying of “If you love what you do then you will never work a day in your life” are words that I have also found to resonate with me. It’s something that I strive towards and something that I have tried to instil into others.
What do you hope you will be doing in the next five years?
Less quantity surveying. It may sound strange to say this, but I hope in the next five years to be doing less of traditional quantity surveying and providing more strategic thinking, asset optimization, cost led design and insight on jobs. The typical model now of quantity surveying is exceptionally time consuming in the “bean counting” side of the job and with the increase of innovation and technology this will change.
This dose not mean that there will be less QS work to do but that the shift of the service will change. We will revert to more cost led design and proactive cost management as opposed to reactive estimating and reporting. This is something I have felt passionately about in my current and previous roles and that technology must be treated as the future of QS’ing as opposed to the enemy.
What’s the most helpful advice you were given?
If someone hasn’t asked a “stupid question” in a while then the question that is being asked isn’t thought provoking enough. The idea of a question having an autonomous “Yes Person” response as a positive outcome is something that I was always thought as a negative result. In construction we need to think differently and push the art of the possible to it’s limits and in doing so we sometimes have to ask and answer questions that might seem mad initially but provoke innovation and success.
To quote Henry Ford “If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”. Changing the status quo is not only essential in our line of work but is encouraged here at K2.
Do you have a favourite album, book, film?
Favourite album is Panic Prevention by Jamie T. Remember hearing it for the first time and seeing him live at Brixton Academy.
Film would have to be the first Rocky. Not just the film and the bad acting but the story that goes with it. If you’ve never heard the story of how Stallone created and sold the film and what he did with the money from it then you should definitely look it up.
Book would have to be A Serious of Unfortunate Events. My Year 6 Teacher read them to the class and she had the most enjoyable reading voice. I would compare her to Morgan Freeman and David Attenborough where you just can’t help take on board what it is they have to say.
What is your favourite building?
Alexandra Palace. They say you only learn from the difficult projects, and this was definitely one of them. It was my first proper project lead job, had a multitude of issues to navigate and was just an amazing building and facility to be a part of. I’ve returned several times since for music events, Darts and summer cinema events and every time I return it makes me proud to have played a part in its existence. It was there in the breakout space that I got the email that I had passed my chartership and a project that just held a lot of firsts for me.
