Oman

The 634-bed Royal Hospital in Oman (1987). I was on site for almost exactly one year.

The year previous, following an invitation by the architects to become involved, Peter Shephard and I formed Healthtec Ltd. to provide equipment inspection services. Our brief at the Royal was to ensure that all equipment complied in every respect with a final specification (ie, as previously agreed between contractor and client) and was correctly located, installed and ready for handover to the client. Following some detailed preparatory work at our UK office in High Wycombe, I went out to site with Terry Horton and we built up a team whose size and composition responded pretty accurately to the varying inspections workload. Peter was very good at finding suitable people and sending them out at short notice, and the team peaked at nine. I was on site for the final year of construction (mid 1986 to mid 1987) and was the last of our team to leave. The client was the Omani MOH, contractor George Wimpey International, equipment sub-contractor Shanning International, architect Percy Thomas Partnership (although we acted on behalf of the architect's team, our client was in fact GWI and we were paid from their local office).

In many ways, I regard this period (together with my time at SATCO, at that some three years into the future) as the "high-point" of my career (sad, but true). It is certainly a time that I often refer back to, if only as an example of what can be done!