Graeme Reid

Head of service, City of Edinburgh Council

Expertise

Project Management, Construction, Design

Location

Scotland

My highlights

Delivering a retrofit strategy for council houses across Edinburgh

Meeting all the Network Rail approvals, allowing the installation of a £100m building near Edinburgh Waverly Station

Overseeing the design of the ETFE roof at the Elements, Livingston

A day in my life

My work life is really rewarding.

I get to spend my day leading a brilliant team of professionals, and together we are delivering transformational change to homes across Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh.

I see the work that I do as making a generational difference to families all over the city.

Every day, I get to meet some amazing people, whether it’s politicians, residents, contractors or colleagues. This is something I treasure and love about my career.

After turning 51 recently, my focus after work is getting fitter, spending evenings at the gym or swimming. I also try to get out and go for a walk each day, either before work or at lunchtime. I live in a rural area and find walking really helps me reset and relax.

Fellowship brings with it a real opportunity to have some influence over our profession.

I work hard to give opportunities to less advantaged younger people or others who deserve opportunities they have not had before.

I want to do more, and Fellowship gives me the chance to do that.

What inspired you to become a civil engineer?

I grew up in a small town called Armadale in West Lothian. I used to spend a lot of time as a young child playing on miles of embankment of the redundant Edinburgh to Glasgow passenger railway line, which closed in 1956.

It was reopened in 2010 and is now an electrified and busy route between the two destinations and has a new station at Armadale, but back then the trains, rails and sleepers were gone.

Even at an early age, I used to look along the line and level of the ballast and then look down to the rolling fields metres below my feet and wonder who on earth had the skills and ability to build such a thing. Even the old stone bridges were beautifully cut and erected.

I’ve not thought about it before, but I would say that is my earliest memory of thinking to myself, I want to be able to do something like that.

We asked Graeme…

I would recommend a career in civil or infrastructure engineering because...

We work in an industry that is packed full of extremely talented people.

We get to design and construct some of the most recognisable and long-lasting structures all over the world.

Our work connects people, and can transform lives.

It’s the best profession in the world!

Complete this phrase: I'm a civil or infrastructure engineer/technician, but I'm also...

...a very proud dad.

My kids are 23 and 21, and I am immensely proud of the progress they have made in life so far. They are way beyond where I was at that stage in my life in so many ways.

That fills me with pride, although it would be wise to say most of the credit should go to my wife, Carol!

Name one civil or infrastructure engineering myth you'd like to bust.

My grandfather served in the army during the Second World War, as did my great-grandfather in the Great War.

My Granddad told me that when he was marching with his buddies, and they came to a bridge, they used to break stride - presumably to prevent the resulting resonance from collapsing the bridge!

I believed that for years, which gives you some insight into me.

How does your role contribute to addressing climate change?

Part of my role at the City of Edinburgh Council is to plan and deliver a whole-house retrofit strategy across the entire high-rise residential estate over the next 15 years, with the first of these works commencing on site now.

This programme will deliver excellent thermally efficient homes and blocks all over the city, and the target is to provide families with the ability to live in their homes throughout a winter without needing to turn on their heating.

Clearly, this will have a significant positive impact on these residents but will also have a strong sustainability outcome as well.

How does your role contribute to making the industry more diverse and inclusive?

In my role, I am incredibly fortunate and proud to say that I have the most talented, capable, cohesive and professional team in the council.

My service area is reasonably new, and the team has been built from scratch. My reflection is that this strength comes from the broad diversity in the team I’ve built.

Every day, I see examples of team members supporting each other to achieve our collective goals, which is so satisfying. That only happens when everyone feels valued, confident and happy.

What role does digital technology play in your job?

New technology is a challenge for me, but I have some excellent colleagues in my team who drag me along with them!

An example being our introduction of a new asset management strategy and plan. I hope the use of new technology, along with ISO55000, will transform how we organise ourselves, plan and deliver our services.

What motivated you to become professionally qualified?

I have reached a stage in my career and life where I have a little more time than I used to, and as I touched on earlier, I wanted to do something to address a lack of confidence in myself. I made two decisions.

Firstly, I wanted to become professionally qualified with the Institution of Civil Engineers, and I’m very proud to be able to say I’ve achieved Fellowship, which is the proudest moment of my career.

Secondly, I’m going to become that old guy that most of you will remember as a student who was in your class at university!

I will start in September to achieve an honours degree in civil engineering over the next three years. I don’t believe this will do much for me at this stage of my career, but I want to do it for me.

I will continue working four days a week and attend studies on Fridays. I’m really looking forward to it.

What does being professionally qualified with the ICE mean for your career?

For me, Fellowship with this great institution introduces real prestige and recognition.

I strongly believe it brings increased professional credibility, which to me is important when you hold a leadership position and are responsible for so many colleagues and such a large service area.

Lastly and most importantly, Fellowship brings with it a real opportunity to have some influence over our profession.

I work hard to give opportunities to less advantaged younger people or others who deserve opportunities they have not had before.

I want to do more, and Fellowship will give me the chance to do that. I’m really looking forward to supporting wherever I can.

How did the ICE and your employer support you to become professionally qualified?

The City of Edinburgh Council has been very supportive.

It’s a fantastic place to work, and I’m proud to work alongside such a diverse range of professionals. When I spoke with my director about my development plan for the year, he was fully supportive and encouraged me throughout. That really helped boost my confidence that I had the credentials to become a member of the ICE.

That same support continued when I made contact with the regional director in Scotland. Once we had a discussion about my career to date, I was immediately encouraged to apply for membership, but as a Fellow. I cannot tell you how much that positively impacted my confidence.

Graeme's career path

I left university with an Higher National Diploma (HND) in civil engineering in 1995. I had planned to stay to complete a bachelor's degree. However, I applied for some job opportunities and was fortunate enough to be offered a job as a site engineer for a small civil/groundworks contractor, so I made the decision to begin my career that way.

I soon moved on to main contracting and was fortunate to work on some relatively large projects in the central belt of Scotland. This led me to spend a large part of my career with Miller Construction, making me who I am today.

I loved working there and learned so much from the exceptional people around me from a technical, professional, team building and ethics point of view.

If I’m honest with myself, I always had a lack of confidence that I was not as talented as those around me. Looking up to so many highly educated people, I feel that my lack of a degree qualification likely held me back when it shouldn’t have.

I left Miller after the 2008 recession and have been with Edinburgh Council ever since.

I joined as an operations manager responsible for the housing capital programme and was given the opportunity to become a head of service in July 2024.

I love my current job. Some of the eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that I work out of our head office in Edinburgh, the same building I helped build back in the early 2000s. I reflect on this at times when I’m sitting in a meeting room and recall carrying out torque checks on the bolt assemblies of the curtain walling in that room.