The woman shaping a new era in construction
With pre-election talk raising the prospect of a construction boom and a rush to training it feels like a very good time to talk to someone who understands all angles - Nicola Bird, of KW Bell Group.
Dear reader,
Welcome to Monday’s edition of The Raikes Journal. We hope you had a great weekend.
Just in case you missed it we rounded off last week with a long-read interview with Kevin Pope, the boss and founder of Protrack Group and the fledgling BioStart Security.
Why the interest? The latter firm hopes to release a product which could disrupt the vehicle security market and already has the attention of the likes of Amazon. We spoke to Pope about his incredible journey and about that gamechanging product.
You can read it via the home page of our website, here.
All of which followed our previous piece - which saw us ask the county’s main chambers of commerce what they want to see from the next Government!
In the news in brief today we celebrate the incredible achievements of Gloucester Hartpury Women’s Rugby - a simply incredible team doing incredible things on and off the pitch.
And we flag a niche webinar tomorrow (Tuesday 25 June), which will see law firm Willans brief businesses on everything they need to know about labour from overseas, so vital to so many companies.
But for the main story, we spoke to a woman who is helping reimagine the construction sector and making her mark here in Gloucestershire, and how the businesses she works for are leading the way in training and development.
We thought her story so far deserved a closer look. And we happen to think it is only the beginning.
As always, we hope you enjoy it.
Please do continue to bear us in mind for your stories and ideas. Contact andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk or telephone 07956 926061.
* Everything you read on The Raikes Journal is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne, our sponsors Hartpury University and Hartpury College, our Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
If you upgrade to paid, you’ll be able to see past the paywalls that fall across many of our second and third email editions of the week and that lock all our archive after two weeks and our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series, you’ll be able to comment on our stories and you’ll be helping make this community interest company sustainable - able to deliver even more stories about the county, about its businesses, charities and education and training providers.
Currently we’re offering 45 per cent off as we seek to build our membership - which works out at just £1.27 a week or £5.50 a month (that’s £66 a year)! For commercial opportunities email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.
Our charity: Gloucestershire & Worcestershire 4x4 Response
🛻 If you are one of those who curse the drivers over those ‘unncessary’ 4x4 vehicles, this might make you think twice. Gloucestershire & Worcestershire 4x4 Response (GW4x4R) is looking to increase the number of volunteer controllers and response drivers as it plan ahead for the Autumn/Winter months, its busiest time of the year. When the legendary weather front the ‘Beast from the East’ hit in 2018, GW4x4R volunteers covered more than 5,000 miles, with 1,200-plus of those being driven in the Forest of Dean by just three volunteer drivers. GW4x4R is a non-profit-making voluntary organisation and a member of 4x4 Response UK. Its BORDA-trained volunteers offer their time and use of their own 4×4 vehicles to provide support and assistance across the region during periods of severe/adverse weather or emergency. It has agreements with the NHS trusts, regional ambulance services, town and county councils and care homes and hospices. Find out more here.
Your Monday briefing notes…
🏉 🏆🏉🎉Stamping their authority and returning to Gloucester with the league title for the second year running has turned Gloucester-Hartpury Women’s Rugby Football Club into even bigger legends. After Bristol Bears opened the scoring on Saturday at Exeter’s Sandy Park stadium following an intense first quarter, and went in at half time 7-17 up, Gloucester fought back after the break to take the title with a 36-24 win. It was the Gloucestershire team’s dominant second half performance that secured the back-to-back Allianz PWR title, adding to last year’s victory over Exeter Chiefs. We couldn’t resist saluting the team. You can read a full match report here.
🏗️ This is one from our Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series, the rolling series we run in our Reports & Deals channel tracking the fortunes of the county’s biggest firms by turnover. We’ve included this article because we think it sits well with our main story below, especially the point both make about a potential new era dawning for construction. The Top 100 story is all about Pegasus Planning, headquartered in Cirencester with offices nationwide and a turnover of £42.45 million. We usually lock these so only our paid-for members can read them as we work to make this community interest company sustainable, but in this case… you can read it all here.
🏗️ Still on the construction theme… a huge congratulations to The George Bence Group, which picked up the Family Business of the Year Award for the South, South West and Wales region in the National Family Business of the Year Awards 2024. Celebrating the triumph on LinkedIn Paul Bence, managing director of the Cheltenham headquartered business said he was “really honoured. It’s presently tough in construction but moments like this help to keep chins up!”.
💻Businesses are facing key changes to immigration rules around hiring overseas staff, but luckilly experts from Willans solicitors are on hand with a free webinar to help firm’s navigate a process that could leave them with a stiff financial penalty if they get it wrong. Not to mention still needing staff! The webinar is due to take place on Tuesday 25 June from 9.30am to 11am. It is aimed at directors, senior executives with responsibility for HR and risk management, business owners, HR professionals and in-house legal advisors. You can find out more here.
👨🏫 Randall & Payne has opened the door to a special session it’s due to stage for Cheltenham Chamber of Commerce members to all businesspeople from the county. The will aim to help business managers look more closely at their leadership style to improve their impact on both the business and their relationships within it. Will Abbott, a business advisory partner at the Shurdington-headquartered firm, will lead the ‘Everything DISC’ learning experience, which will seek to identify your personality type and how best you can harness your qualities. It’s free and due to take place on 16 July from 9am to 11.30am. You can find out more here.
The woman shaping a new era in construction
With pre-election talk raising the prospect of a construction boom and a rush to training it feels like a very good time to talk to someone who understands all angles - Nicola Bird, chief operating officer of KW Bell Group.
By Andrew Merrell
Talk as we run into this year’s general election has put housing and planning front and centre more than once, talk that has caught the ear of the construction sector and built some welcome optimism.
Nicola Bird relays a story from a recent sector group meeting she was at when one person said their business had thousands of planning applications in the pipeline nationally, just to demonstrate how well the system was not working for them.
For Bird, chief operating officer of house builder and contractor KW Bell Group, a more efficient planning system would be welcome, but that then leads to another question – if we are going to start building like never before, where are the staff who are going to make all these projects happen?
She already knows part of the answer to what is actually a complicated question, and has possibly more right to ask it than most too - she led on the creation of the county’s first dedicated school for construction skills, AccXel.
She now works alongside her sister, Natalie King as joint managing director of the Cinderford-based training centre, an initiative that attracted the attention of government ministers before it even opened and drew the eyes of anyone looking to break into construction or train staff since.
For a sector dominated by men for so long there is serious mileage in someone discussing why it took a women to come along and see the benefits of such a facility and have the nerve to build it and threaten change.
“Lots of people told us ‘no, it won’t work’,” she said, not wishing to name names.
AccXel now has national and international industry partners including JCB, Leica Geosystems and Think Project, as well as Gloucestershire firms, and is already well-placed for what lies ahead - if the predicted uplift comes - even if it is also fighting an industry not necessarily as disposed to apprentices like you might think.
Small print laid down by the CITB (Construction Industry Training Board) drives some firms away from employing staff full-time towards sub-contractors and that impacts on the numbers of apprentices they will invest in. It’s a subject too complicated to get into here, but one that drives some who want their industry to move forward to distraction.
As for AccXel, a year after opening, it is already proving the doubters wrong.
“We have a contract with a major developer we can’t name currently. We will take 70 apprentices from them next year, which will mean we have 140 apprentices next year,” said Bird.
There is also something else going on here, for a family so passionate about where they come from, and a district for long overlooked by all, this is also the Forest of Dean doing it for itself – and raising the bar to new levels.
A bullet point CV of Bird’s life might suggest the daughter of Peter Bell, managing director of KW Bell Group, and granddaughter of founder Keith Bell, she was bound to end up in the family business and in management.
That is not how it was at all.
Bird was naturally familiar with the business, but came to work for it almost by accident, rose on merit, and did what so many people do who feel they need to justify their very existence in the same room as others with ample experience do – she gained qualifications and she pushed herself, and pushed herself and still does.
As well as COO of KW Bell Group (Bell Homes, Bell Contracting, Bell Partnerships and Bell Plant) as we have said she is also joint managing director of AccXel, but it started very differently.
“I dropped out of A-Levels and ended up at college studying hair and beauty, because I thought that was all I was good at,” she said, but when she looks back finds she was already writing a rather impressive storyline - even if she didn’t know where it was going.
“Because I was doing something I enjoyed I had a passion for it and I suddenly found learning easy again. In my second year I was already teaching it too,” she said.
Bird was just 18 and passed those extra exams to allow her to teach at night school, alongside her day course. She was discovering that when she developed an interest in something, she could learn, learn fast, had drive and could turn her inquisitive nature to her advantage.
It was an experience that was to sew the seeds of a passion for lifelong learning, and it was a pattern that repeated when she found her way back to the family business.
“I started in admin just to earn a bit of money,” said Bird, who had married at 19, had her second daughter when she was 23 and was driven simply by the need to help support her family.
But something happened that made it more than just a job, and her background educating people also worked in her favour.
“I started to look at what we did a lot more closely. I was involved in training from the off. It was when health and safety was rising up the agenda everywhere and you could win contracts if you could deliver.
“I began asking why we did certain things, what the return was on us doing them,” she said.
The pattern she had laid down going through college emerged again as the more knowledge she accrued the more she questioned her own ability to do it and sought out qualifications to learn more and bolster her confidence.
She might have been the granddaughter of the founder and her father’s presence will have loomed large, but this was also the straight-talking, male-dominated world of construction and all that brings with it. Female allies were few and far between.
“I did a masters degree in construction safety management from the University of South Wales,” she said, referring to her first heavyweight qualification she gained as she sought both knowledge and fought that demon that stalks so many, imposter syndrome.
She admits to finding herself trying out different personas to fit into the male-dominated world to begin with, trying her best once upon a time to ‘man up’. I asked if that worked.
“I wasn’t able to keep it up. People saw straight through me,” she said, laughing, her honesty and modesty other traits she cannot hide either.
There came a point, she said, at which she consciously decided to just be herself, which alongside her sister, Natalie, brought an approachable, feminine injection of style, intelligence, flare, confidence even, and sense of fun to a world of shirts, ties and hard hats.
It is a look the pair have carried off when the hard hats and high vis come out for on-site photoshoots, and one that has not gone unnoticed.
“I do occasionally get the odd comment. I recall being told recently to dress more like a man to make my way,” she said, adding, as if still baffled by the whole experience, that the comment had come in all seriousness from another woman.
When we meet in the boardroom of KW Bell Group, with the sound of the wellbeing and office space being built downstairs fittingly finding its way through to where we are sat, she looks very much like a woman much more comfortable in her own skin now, relaxed, but still someone on a mission.
And she admits it remains a journey.
When she made it to the board room and her father offered the chance to go on the QuoLux LEAD™ leadership development course that was to lead to an MBA, it was Bird who stepped forward.
“I suddenly found myself in a board room and while I knew the business, I didn’t think I knew enough about how to manage things at board level.
“I had only ever know two or three other businesses too, and the course was a great chance to learn from others,” she said, explaining why she put herself forward for another round of challenging learning.
It is a journey she described as invaluable in developing her skills and further convincing her she really may be worthy afterall of the growing accolades and praise she was accumulating.
The QuoLux ethos is about working on your own business as the subject and partnering with other learners to see inside their companies and share and solve problems together, and it is this that help her better understand that in business some issues and challenges are common.
Did her dad not want her and her sister to go straight into the family firm from the off?
“My dad was not against us going into the business at all. He was very open.
“He knows that as well as a lot of good times, with business also comes a lot of very difficult times too. Hard times. It is not something you wish on someone lightly,” she said, explaining that she knows now he wanted it to be their choice and for the right reasons.
“He has always been there for me and always very supportive.”
And when he did announce the high-profile family promotion, he made sure he said it loud – and spelled out what it meant.
“I’m proud to have my daughter by my side, particularly in an industry that remains predominantly male-dominated. Nicola’s leadership will inspire more women and girls to pursue careers in construction, addressing the skills crisis facing our industry,” said Peter.
“One of the challenges you will face when you are running a family business - a large SME in this case with an £80 million to £90 million turnover – is you have to see the bigger picture and understand it needs managing properly.
“I believe she is the right person for that role. When my dad passed (Keith Bell, the firm’s founder, who died earlier this year - 2024), we started to look at the businesses again – especially at Bell Homes and Bell Contracting, and realised they needed to be a lot closer.
“We also wanted people to be sure there was a proper succession plan in place, with the right people at the helm.
“One of the biggest issues I find in the business we are in, and which is a priority for me, is communication.
“If we are going to make a big investment, I want our people to understand what we are doing and why so they can buy into it too. That’s up to me.
“Nicola understands the business and is brilliant at communicating, and with everything she has done at AccXel and how she had led that, she is the right person for the job.”
It was also a move that probably made everyone in the family very happy indeed.
“My mother stayed at home and looked after my dad and us, but she always wanted us to be involved in the business and always told us to follow our passions and what we wanted to do,” again alluding to the challenge of being a woman in a male-centric industry.
In a more straightforward fashion Peter Bell put it like this: “Hopefully they can shake up this industry that has been male dominated for a little too long.”
That encouragement to follow her nose, learn, develop and push forward encouraged by her mum has not gone away.
“My daughter works here too. She’s actually over the road at AccXel as well, studying a Level 3 construction support technician. She wants to go into procurement.
“I can see her drive and enthusiasm for what she is doing. It is great to see,” said Bird, when I ask about a potential fourth generation.
There is a feeling that both Bell Group and AccXel are on the front foot and ready - able to manage up and down turns.
“We (KW Bell Group) are in a really, really strong position,” she said, in that measured, reassuring way good chief operating offices seem to have.
You can’t help thinking her grandfather, the former bricklayer Keith Bell, who founded the business back in 1965 would approve - even if the women do seem to be rising through the ranks. He not only founded the business, but helped shape it into one of the biggest construction firms in the county and a major employer in the district he loved.
Tributes came from far and wide – including within racing circles which he was also passionate about – when he died in March at the age of 82.
Bird became chief operating officer just two months later. You can’t help thinking if anyone ever writes an article about the legacy left by the third generation of the family – the first women to fight their way front and centre – it will be special.
Nicola Bell and her sister have achieved so much already. Natalie, someone Nicola described as quite simply ‘vital’ to her own success, is also on the economic development board of the Forest Regeneration Partnership, and Nicola hoping to get join the new Gloucestershire Economic Growth (GEG) Board at the county council, which will replace the functions of the former business group GFirst LEP. It puts both of them in positions to help shape the wider future of the county.
But despite all they’ve both done already you can’t helping thinking that is only the foundation block - and that their real impact will be the story they are only just starting to write now.