James Sheppard

James Sheppard

Director

James is both a chartered Project Manager and a registered Architect. He specialises in significant, complex projects with challenging delivery and funding requirements. His expertise was honed through working on schemes globally, with a particular focus on project managing major cultural schemes. His experience also includes projects within the retail, commercial, education and private residential sectors.

If you weren’t a Project Manager what would you be?

I’d probably still be working as an architect but given carte blanche then I’d have loved to have been a production designer in film or theatre. I previously worked making bespoke exhibition stands all over the world and really enjoyed the maker doer process.

What are the key challenges that or are likely to affect your sector in the next five years?

There is an immediate and overarching need for the construction industry to meaningfully address the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Aside from this, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to make a big impact upon how we cope with an ever more complex process, by assisting with more routine tasks and intelligently sorting and refining data.

Interesting fact that nobody knows about you?

I once drove Usain Bolt from Putney to Hackney Empire to watch a play, I bought him a Guinness and a Mars bar.

What is the best play you’ve ever seen and why?

Mark Rylance as Rooster Byron in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem is hands down the best play I’ve ever seen. His performance was outstanding, and the portrayal of rural West Country life was so realistic it almost made me cringe at the memories. So good I have now seen it 3 times!