The five hundred million pound woman: Colette O'Shea

Colette O’Shea is more than just a woman in construction. For companies wanting to snap up work on London’s prestigious commercial and retail megaschemes, she is the woman in construction.

As Land Securities’ London development director, it is down to her to deliver the group’s £500m portfolio, decide which projects the capital needs and who will design and build them.

With a willowy stature, O’Shea cuts a delicate, almost reserved figure, but when she speaks, it is with the kind of self-assured authority that you imagine would put an end to most arguments. This, along with her attitude that it is your achievements that will get people to listen to you, have been her tools for success in a male-dominated industry: “Issues over your gender are not things you should deal with head on,” she says. “Rather, they are things you should deal with through your performance.” And besides, now that Land Secs has announced plans to start moving on its London development pipeline next year, she has no problem getting people to listen.

Six years ago, O’Shea joined Land Secs as development manager from the Mercers’ Company, a livery firm in the City, where she trained as a surveyor. In 2006 she was made London development director, before she took on the £3bn regeneration of Ebbsfleet Valley in the Thames Gateway.

The project taking up most of her time is the one looming up outside the window of the office she is in today – One New Change. The 560,000ft2 mixed-use development next to St Paul’s Cathedral and designed by Jean Nouvel is one of Land Secs’ flagship developments. It is one O’Shea has overseen from the start. “One New Change is a bit of a career highlight,” she says. “I am very proud of persuading people that a retail space with beautiful design next to the cathedral was the right thing to do.”

She adds, though, that this is just “one of many” schemes to have kept her inspired. “I walk around London and see buildings that I have either built or worked on, from social housing schemes in Greenwich to major retail buildings in the City. I feel I have done things that have a real impact on people’s lives and that have influenced the whole built form of central London.”

It’s a man thing

While she says that times have changed since she started in the industry back in 1989, she admits that being a woman has sometimes been problematic: “God, yes, there have been loads of times when people have made it clear they would rather I was a man. Over the course of my career, there have been difficult people who make that clear through their body language. It happened a lot more when I was younger before I was known for being good at what I do.”

She adds that her negative experiences have always come from the corporate side of the business, not the actual muddy boots construction level: “I have never, ever had problems on site. People take the view that, if you are on site, you are on site for a reason and so you are respected for your capabilities.”

Steve McGuckin, who worked with O’Shea on Land Secs’ London portfolio before joining Turner & Townsend in February, says: “I never saw her being a woman having any impact on her role. There is that phrase which I always find amusing though: ‘To get ahead, women have to be twice as good as men. Fortunately that’s not difficult.’”

O’Shea says companies should be excited about hiring more women: “We are better able to multi-task, meaning our ability to work through problems and find solutions is that much greater than men’s. A mixed gender team is much more effective as women think completely differently from men, enabling greater debate. On One New Change, for example, when we are working out which retailers we should include, the men and the women usually want completely different things so there are often huge debates.”

Kickstarting the pipeline

Land Secs announced last month that it hopes to get its London development pipeline moving again in 2010 and has spent the last year securing 2 million ft2 of planning consent around the city – a massive boost for the construction industry after months of projects being mothballed and stalled.

The £100m Park House on Oxford Street and the £100m Selbourne House projects in Victoria are the most likely to kick off the work and O’Shea says that, with £500m of work about to shudder back into action, the opportunities are there. “We feel confident about starting really significant projects next year and this is an indication that we are starting to feel positive. I hope that will mean the rest of the industry starts to feel more positive because we will need people to build these projects.”

In terms of winning the work, O’Shea says nothing that most wouldn’t expect. She wants people who think collaboratively and firms that are “the best of the best”. But she would not rule out working with firms who have been fined by the Office of Fair Trading in the cover pricing case, thanks to Land Secs’ own strict system of due diligence: “That’s not really an issue as we would have to be satisfied that anyone we were working with met all the checks and balances we had in place.”

The one thing the whole Land Secs supply chain must share, you suspect, is the Essex-born O’Shea’s view that it is the rarest of privileges to work on the London skyline. On this, she speaks with real passion: “What this city has achieved so successfully is the intermingling between the old and the modern. It’s the best city in the world.”

So what would be her close second? “There is none. There is just no other city for me. London is in my blood.”