Gary Taylor- Looking back on 25 years of BYPY
Photo credit: Birmingham Post
This year, we are celebrating 25 years of the iconic BYPY Awards. The awards highlight the exceptional talent and skills of young professionals across Greater Birmingham, while also giving the overall winners the chance to open doors in their careers that they might not otherwise have been able to open.
As part of these celebrations, we spoke to the overall winners of the awards, dating right back to the very first winner in 2001 to last year's winner.
Meet Gary Taylor, our very first winner of the BYPY Awards in 2001.
Gary is a Chartered Engineer with 28 years’ experience in development and construction.
Graduating with First Class Honours in Civil and Structural Engineering from Sheffield University in 1988, Gary joined Arup in the same graduate intake as Stephen Tillman. During the following six years, Gary worked on a variety of major projects in the UK and overseas.
Gary started working for Argent on Brindleyplace while he was at Arup in 1993 and joined Argent in 1994 as a construction project manager based at Brindleyplace. Subsequently his role was widened to comprise marketing and general commercial management of the scheme. He became Director of Argent Group PLC in 2000.
Once the development was complete, Gary led the initiative to establish the £300 million Brindleyplace Limited Partnership with multiple investors and had overall responsibility for asset management and estate management strategies for Brindleyplace. Gary also led the teams responsible for Paradise Circus in Birmingham and St Peter’s Square in Manchester.
Read below to find out how winning BYPY felt for Gary...
What category did you win?
I won the Property award category and the overall award in 2001.
Tell us a bit about yourself…
I trained as a structural engineer with Arup and after about six years I moved across to a property development company called Argent that was developing Brindley Place, who were one of my clients.
I was doing construction project management there and there were one or two changes, a guy I was working with moved on to do The Mailbox, Alan Chatham, and as he moved on to do that, I got told that my role would change and I would be leading the overall development.
At that point in time, I was sort of new to property, as opposed to my engineering background, and I was only 32 years old at that point, so it was a pretty senior position for somebody young and experienced to be in.
Where were you working at the time of winning your award?
I was working as a director at Argent at the time of winning my award.
What does your career look like now?
After winning my award in 2001, I went on to run developments in Manchester and elsewhere around the country with Argent.
From a Birmingham perspective, the biggest legacy was that we bought the properties at Paradise Circus, where we kick started and did a lot of work on the preparatory development. Subsequently it is my old team that's gone on to deliver it.
I left Argent in 2011 and set up my own property company which I run with only a couple of colleagues.
What did winning BYPY do for your career?
After winning BYPY in 2001, I won the Inspiring Leader award about three or four years afterwards at the 2005 BYPY Awards. I also won Property Personality of the Year at the Insider Property Awards in 2002.
Winning the BYPY Awards gave me a leg up in terms of profile. I already knew a lot of people, and I was known because of my unique role at Brindley Place, but it definitely gave me more exposure.
There was also so much good will behind the awards, it was and still is one of the best award ceremonies there is because I think in a in a world that often feels like it's full of award ceremonies, it does feel like it is an authentic award. I think people do genuinely want to celebrate the winner, it certainly felt that way even with the first one.
Something else that I found personally rewarding was that it was a very senior interview panel, and it was probably the first interview panel I had been through for a while, certainly from a personal perspective. They were very much well respected and there was a very strong feel of candidates as well, so it did give you a big boost of confidence winning it.
Why should people apply for GBYPY?
The process itself is a useful and rewarding process, it makes you think about where you are in your career and what you want to achieve. It's always helpful to have an external process to go through to make you review where you are and what you are doing.
The interview process, although they can often seem daunting, the judges genuinely are interested in the candidates that come forward. Don't be put off about putting yourself through an interview process because it actually is an enjoyable process and you should look forward to it and welcome it.
Finally, if you are successful enough and manage to win, then there is all the profile that comes with it.
How did winning BYPY feel for you?
It was overwhelming, to be honest. It was a fantastic evening, I was in a room full of people that just genuinely wanted you and everyone else to do well. I was just very lucky enough to come out top of the pile.
I think it is one of Birmingham's best characteristics that genuinely in Birmingham, in professional services, people want to see people succeed. Whoever won on that night would have been warmly congratulated, even by the other candidates. There was just an overwhelming feeling of good will that came across in that room.
