“There’s lots of ways to learn at M Squared.”
Meet: Ryan Bolton – Foreman, Hard Landscaping (London)
In our third Rising Stars feature, Ryan shares how he’s been able to step up with M Squared:
Ryan thought M Squared would just be stopgap job. But within a few weeks he was heading up a new team, and about to be playing his part in the business’s growth in London.
He joined as agency staff in January 2023, working as a Machine Driver on a development in Birmingham, close to his hometown in the Midlands. Working with a team travelling down from Scotland each week, Ryan was one of only a handful of lads local to the job. After meeting the management team on site and learning about M Squared’s ambitions, Ryan realised they matched his own.
“Initially I thought it’d just be a temporary job,” he says. “But a lot of the lads were travelling down to the job and there was an opportunity to lead on it locally. I knew what I wanted to do for my career, so I stepped up and we did some recruitment locally to build a bit of a squad for me to manage.
“I saw that there was potential for me to move up and learn with M Squared.”
After a successful three-month trial, Ryan was kept on as Foreman: “I proved I could manage a team. It was a project I’d not really done before, too – I’d done 9 years as a groundworker mainly on residential housing. Whereas that was a commercial job, a high-end design, and a city centre-based project.
“Because a lot of the work we do at M Squared is unique, you get to do and learn new things.”
He’s since been supported to qualify as a Site Supervisor, through the Site Supervisors’ Safety Training Scheme (SSSTS) and been trusted to lead on a long-running project in London. The job is a high profile, 6-acre development in central London which M Squared had already completed the second phase of. Ryan is now responsible for the third and fourth phases of delivery: “This project’s a city centre residential complex with retail units and lots of public realm areas. They expect very high quality down here.”
Working away has its challenges for the father-of-three but with real career prospects (and a supportive wife) it is well worth it: “It is tough working away from home but it’s a career opportunity and my wife’s very supportive, so we’ve bit the bullet.
“I get to go home a bit earlier so I can pick the kids up from school on a Friday too, which they just love. And the company is flexible if I do need to go back – like for my lad’s birthday. They understand. We’re a friendly team overall, even the management, and that goes a long way.”
Ryan now offers that same flexibility to his team of 12 and always gets it back, he says: “Some of my guys are from Europe so they’ll travel home to see their family for a few weeks at a time and we make that work for them.
“At the same time, there’s a lot of instances where we need to stay on a job until late and the lads will work through. We’re committed to doing whatever it takes to complete jobs by the handover dates.
“The clients would agree that we go the extra mile, too.”
Working directly with clients and other contractors is another new role Ryan’s taken on with M Squared, through the types of jobs and the business’s use of new systems for project management: “For me, it’s more career progression and for the client, it makes it easier for them to communicate and get responses on questions.
“I’ve been working with drawing annotations and the pricing of jobs and looking into NVQs and more management training. We’ve started training for the lads too. I’ve got one going from labouring into an NVQ and another who’s gone through the SSSTS too.”
Between his training opportunities, the business’s flexibility, and the trust put in him to take on big projects, Ryan’s confident that what started as a temporary role is now a job for life: “It is genuinely a good company to work for. We’re always progressing and are very supportive of people trying to progress in their careers. I’ve had that from Kerr [the Managing Director] myself, so the career plan’s there for me.”