How Matt Summerhill went from apprentice quantity surveyor to managing partner - via the foot-and-mouth crisis and Headingley’s £21m pavilion

“I can genuinely say I have never felt bored,” says Summerhill, the managing partner of the Yorkshire, Humber and North East region for Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB) when reflecting on what he has most enjoyed about his career.

"I’ve delivered affordable housing, university buildings, FE colleges, offices, factories, infrastructure, leisure projects – you name it, I’ve delivered it.

"There’s always been something different and in all of those sectors I’ve learnt something very different.

"The second thing has been working with some amazing people, both internally and externally. I’ve always enjoyed the camaraderie and spirit of working together to deliver an end goal.”

The Sheffielder fell into his career somewhat by chance after answering a newspaper advert for a junior quantity surveyor position in his home city in the 1990s.

He says that after admitting during the interview that he “hadn’t got a clue” what a quantity surveyor actually did, his honest approach won him a job and he began working alongside a part-time apprenticeship degree at Nottingham Trent University.

Shortly after starting there, a role came up at RLB (which was then called Bucknall Austin) and he has remained with the firm ever since – progressing through the ranks to become regional managing partner in 2016.

He says there are many projects that he looks back on with pride from his career, but three that particularly stand out.

The first was being seconded to Defra for two years in the early 2000s in the aftermath of the foot-and-mouth crisis which saw mass culling taking place on farms.

He was based in Carlisle – working first on tidy-up operations around the culls and then on rebuilding farms across Cumbria.

Summerhill says it was a formative experience. "After something so horrific for the community to be able to support rebuilding lives and businesses was a real eye-opener.

"There was one guy whose flock had been wiped out, a unique flock created by his great-grandfather. It was his entire family’s history and helping him to rebuild was hard work at the time but left a great sense of satisfaction afterwards.”

He says also looks back with great pride on being able to help deliver around 1,500 new affordable homes across the course of his career.

“I led the team that delivered well over 500 houses for Rotherham Borough Council in really challenging areas. To see the impact that had on families moving from temporary accommodation and things like that and seeing how people turned those houses into homes really does make you realise how the industry does change society in a good way.

"Driving through parts of Rotherham, I will have a little look at places where I have delivered stuff and that gives me a great sense of pride.”

One special personal highlight was the stunning £21m Headingley Carnegie pavilion for Yorkshire CCC, which opened in 2010. "I’m a huge obsessive about cricket so being in Yorkshire CCC’s world for four years when we were delivering that was great for me. I remember meeting the South African player Hashim Amla who is a big hero of mine."

Summerhill’s own Yorkshire team has 12 apprentices, with a further 12 having graduated over the last two years.

He says: "My passion around apprenticeships and opportunity comes a lot from my background. I was very fortunate to have great parents who were really positive about us and our education. I was the first person in the family to go to university. I was born and brought up in south-east Sheffield and people used to say there was more deprivation there than Albania.

"The opportunity the industry has given me from a pretty humble background has been amazing.” He says his own management style is inspired by the late David Bucknall, the company’s former chairman.

"He was a massive inspiration to me when I was an apprentice. Every time he came into the office he made sure he spoke to every person in the office. He knew them by name, he knew everything about them. It resonated with me about how you can positively impact someone just by going and having a chat and seeing how their weekend was. When I was promoted to our senior leadership board, I think the best piece of feedback I got was from anyone was from one of our graduates who said, ‘I can tell Matt he is wrong’. When people have that sort of confidence, you are creating the right sort of environment.”

When he took over as managing partner in Yorkshire in 2016, RLB had 30 people in the region based in Sheffield. It opened an office in Leeds in 2017 and has recently expanded its office space in the Platform building in city. In total, there are 150 people now working for the company in the region.

In the first quarter of 2023, Summerhill’s regional team secured a record number of new construction starts, while RLB is expecting income to surpass the £100m mark when it files its accounts later this year.

RLB is also looking to open a further office in the North-East and Summerhill has big ambitions for the future.

"If you’ve got good people, great clients and you do a great job the numbers tend to look after themselves. The growth of the UK business has been reflected in the growth of the Yorkshire business. By 2030 I think we will get to about 250 to 300 staff in Yorkshire and the North East. There is a really exciting journey still to go.”