DAVID WADDS Director at Carney Consultancy and Carney CDM.
What is your role at Carney Consultancy and Carney CDM?
I am a director at both firms. Along with managing director, Angela Carney, I help with the day-to-day running of Carney Consultancy and oversee a lot of our fire-risk assessments and deliver training. I also look after the IT side of the business. Carney CDM was launched in 2022 and is a sister company of Carney Consultancy – a health and safety, training specialist consultancy working in the construction and engineering sectors. Led by our director, Caroline Morton, Carney CDM provides principal designer services in line with the CDM Regulations 2015. My role is to help develop existing relationships that we have with principal contractors.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
Every day is different. It is a fast-paced working environment which I enjoy and everyone in the business has an opportunity to develop their skill set and progress.
What’s your proudest business achievement?
Being appointed as a director at Carney Consultancy at the end of last year. I joined the company in 2016 having worked in the glazing industry as a glazing install manager. I started working in construction in 2007 and in 2011 graduated with a degree in construction management and began working in a supervisory role.
However, I began to realise that I wanted a role that would involve less travel and I also wanted a career change. In 2014, I undertook a NEBOSH General Certificate to focus my career towards health and safety. I was then fortunate to become a health and safety advisor at Carney Consultancy, I became operations manager in January 2019 and went on to become a director in 2021.
What challenges have you encountered?
Moving from one sector to another was a huge challenge. However, with this came huge opportunities and personal progression.
How has the industry changed?
It has diversified massively. There are vast opportunities for people to undertake alternative roles and enter sectors from different routes. If we look at the Carney team, we have graduates, those who took the apprenticeship option and others that started their careers within the trades and worked their way up. There isn’t a defined path and no one route is the right way.
How do you like to unwind?
By spending time with my wife and daughter.
