Congratulations to our new Associates

31/01/24

Congratulations to our new Associates – Adam Clarke, Andrew Spencer, and Jonathan Ashton.

Integral members of our Leeds team for over 10 years, they have made an outstanding contribution to our continued growth.

This promotion recognises their hard work, inspiring team leadership, and diligent project delivery. Working with care and integrity, they model our core values through their positive relationships with clients and colleagues.

The directors are delighted to invest in these talented and trusted managers as they help us shape the exciting future direction of the practice.

Adam Clarke

Adam joined Adept eleven years ago as a graduate engineer/technician, attracted by the opportunity to lead his own projects and help shape the company’s growth. He has twenty years’ structural engineering experience post-graduation and is a hugely talented and dedicated project leader.

For the last eight years, he has been working alongside director Matt Ramsden leading our innovative education team. He is immensely proud of their burgeoning success, most recently with the flagship £8m St Mary’s Catholic Voluntary Academy, a net-zero, biophilic school in Derby. Adam was engineering project lead for the £20m Trinity Academy High School, and its adjacent £10m Vine SEN College in Leeds. He is also proud of being the main project engineer for the award-winning Leeds Kirkgate Market refurbishment. Conserving and rejuvenating this important Listed structure appealed to his appreciation of history and built heritage.

Inherently supportive of his team’s personal progression, he has taken great delight in mentoring a colleague from young apprentice through to qualified project engineer.

Inspired by the positive social value generated by his school projects, Adam is a founding member of our social committee and actively seeks out wellbeing activities that support charities. A keen hiker, he organises volunteering days out in the countryside, seeing it as an opportunity to get everyone into the fresh air (and also to get their hands dirty!). He hopes to instigate some cultural weekends away in the UK for colleagues. A qualified junior football coach, he manages an under-six team to encourage children into sport.

Having achieved this Associateship, Adam feels most grateful for the trust, guidance and support he has received from the directors. He will keep focused on winning new work and forging deeper connections with his peers across the industry.

Andrew Spencer

Joining Adept thirteen years ago after graduating with his structural engineering degree, Andy has quickly developed a proven ability in solid project delivery. Keen to innovate during our early days, he helped progress our use of technology at a faster pace than general industry.

He has discovered a natural talent for creating a harmonious team, bringing out the best in his colleagues through his approachable, supportive demeanour.

A key member of director Matt Ramsden’s team, he is proud of his recent role on the £14m Leeds Mathematics School project. Our team added incredible value to the delivery of this complex city centre refurbishment, and Andy’s unwavering efforts to support Morgan Sindall Construction played a huge part of Adept receiving their Consultant of the Year award. We already have more work underway with Morgan Sindall, but he would jump at the chance to work with the whole Maths School team again.

Andy is also proud of personally nurturing a great relationship with our long-term client CCUK, who have been working with Adept since Andy joined the business. He has worked closely with CCUK to develop industry leading analysis and design tools for carbon fibre strengthening, which have been used in 50+ strengthening schemes throughout the UK.

Andy is eager to attend more industry events, to improve his visibility and use his connections to help develop new workstreams. Whilst his Associate role will bring fresh challenges, he remains committed to delivering projects first and foremost.

He loves family days out and travelling abroad, including visiting relations in Australia. He has recently taken up golf, partly for fun but also in the hope of relieving Gareth of the ‘burden’ of attending all the corporate golf events!

Jonathan Ashton

More familiar to many as Jono, he joined our team over twelve years ago sensing he could carve himself a niche in the growing business. Adept’s early vision to fully embrace the latest design technology felt very progressive to him.

In his eighteen years since graduation, he has developed valuable skills from working in every sector. He is extremely competent, reliable, and conscientious, securing the full trust of the directors to help develop the business. A confident designer, he has led delivery of major warehousing and industrial schemes, as well as complicated heritage redevelopments concerning Listed buildings and conservation.

Stand-out projects include supporting the Parklane Group on a number of residential, aparthotel and student-resi schemes totalling over £20m, and the award-winning £9m expansion of Rudding Park Hotel and Spa – a challenging yet enjoyable project, where he thrived on the collaborative work ethic and getting fully immersed in the details.

Jono continually looks for ways to improve, often visiting completed schemes in operation to reflect on the final outcomes. It’s quite the bonus when a review means taking the family to a boutique hotel or a luxury spa!

He uses his technological expertise to develop timesaving solutions, which have been successfully rolled out across the business. He also helped standardise our procedures and workflows to improve the efficiency and consistency of project outputs.

In his Associate role he will be increasing his visibility amongst clients and colleagues, and hopes to visit our other offices more regularly to share knowledge and efficient ways of working. Maintaining our core values and monitoring best practice will be important to support consistent service delivery and growth.

Jono is also keen to undertake greater engagement with schools and colleges, to attract the next generation and promote wider inclusivity within engineering.