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Spotlight on Jubb Directors: Ross Pomery

Ross Pomery is a relatively new addition to the Board of Directors at Jubb, joining in 2020. He joined as a Director of the Plymouth office, with a real enthusiasm to play a part in the future direction and culture of the business as a whole fostering and developing creative design solutions.

Our first question to Ross was why he loves the South West.

Jubb have an established history working in Plymouth and I’m looking to having more focus in the region, which is very familiar to me having grown up in Cornwall.  Although Jubb work with clients across the UK and sometimes further afield, we are also very proud to be based and work within our four office’s cities and regions. A personal attachment, that I know a lot of the directors have with their office’s city, creates a strong desire to play a part in the enhancement and improvement of that area. This local attachment and pride is an important characteristic of all the Jubb offices and offers an unparalleled benefit to both clients and individuals within our team.

What is your speciality and how has your career progressed?

My engineering background is in structural engineering, but over the last decade I’ve become more accustomed to leading projects with a broader engineering scope with a pre-planning service offering. Since joining Jubb, I’ve really enjoyed continuing these same principles, plus having the ability to explore wider skills due to the team’s in-house knowledge and experience. Examples of this have included large infrastructure design work and bespoke geotechnical work.

What are your favourite projects or the ones you are most proud of and why?

This is always a difficult one to answer as I’ve been fortunate to have been involved in many notable projects through my career to date.

One which I always remember fondly is working as a project engineer on the Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury. It was a project which I used for my chartership exam and from a design perspective, offered something new and a bit different. Challenging at the time, but most rewarding and career defining with hindsight.

My current project work with Jubb is now offering me the opportunity to work on some of the largest projects of my career, technically challenging and offering the opportunity to remain hands-on from a design perspective.

Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury

Is there any news or changes in your specialist sector/industry that you feel strongly about? 

The evolving movement towards reducing carbon use is an important topic and one which all in the construction industry need to embrace from their own perspective if we are collectively going to rebalance the situation. From a structural perspective, less will become more. Reuse of existing structures needs increased focus, potentially through incentives to repurpose a building utilising its inherent ability of an extended design life. Flexibility is another design approach which needs greater standing i.e. structures which can more easily accommodate change and adapt to society needs over time.

What is your favourite structure worldwide and why? 

I was fortunate enough during my time at University to participant in an industry exchange programme with Japan Highways. This experience offered me the opportunity to see first-hand many live construction projects, each dealing with the varying topography of the country through large tunnelling and bridge projects, commonly unseen within the UK. A memorable maintenance project visit was to Pearl Bridge (Akashi Kaikyo) which crosses the Akashi Strait on the Honshu-Shikoku Highway. The shear scale of the structure was breath-taking but equally was its elegant suspended form. The main span measuring 1,991m is not a statistic easily forgotten!

Akashi Kaikyo
Photo by Thomas Schmitz on Unsplash

Ross Pomery is the lead on commercial, public and defence sectors for Jubb. You can contact him directly on 07912 267258 or email [email protected].