Meet our people

Ben Adams

Group Category Manager, Purchasing

"I expected Severn Trent to be a bit sleepy as it used to be a public sector business. I couldn't have been more wrong. It's incredibly dynamic"

What does your current role involve?

I manage a team of category specialists who look after all of the procurement contracts for the infrastructure side of the business. Geographically speaking, we have a broad customer base so my time is split between working in the office and visiting various sites across the UK. I don’t like being deskbound so this job really suits me. I love the mixture of day-to-day activity within the office combined with the freedom to go elsewhere.

How did you start out at Severn Trent? What’s your career path been?

I worked at Peugeot Citroën for about seven years in various logistics and supply chain roles. But in 2006, I took voluntary redundancy as I really fancied changing industry. Coming from such a massive company, I wanted to move to another major, blue chip FTSE 100 organisation and Severn Trent fitted the bill perfectly. Since joining in 2007 I’ve changed roles within purchasing and found that there’s plenty of variety and scope to expand your horizons and keep you interested.

How has working at Severn Trent met or challenged your expectations?

It’s definitely surprised me. I expected Severn Trent to be a bit sleepy as it used to be a public sector business. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s incredibly dynamic and there’s a great depth of change going on here. So you have to be flexible, adaptable and open to new ways of working and thinking.

What do you like the most about Severn Trent?

Although it’s a big company you feel part of a team. Everyone is really motivated and takes pride in what they do. Another thing I like, although it sounds cheesy, is that we provide a public service. The work I’m doing could have an impact on my mum’s water bill.

What have you found most enjoyable?

Throughout the year there are various projects to support local community projects and charities which are always great fun. Last year my team went to a local school to help convert a patch of waste land into a vegetable garden which was really enjoyable. I also look forward to the annual fundraisers for Wateraid such as the 30-mile sponsored mountain challenge and the water rafting day.

What are you most looking forward to?

Although we are less than halfway through the current AMP period, we are already working with our colleagues in Water, Waste and Customer Relations to develop our strategies for AMP6 which begins in April 2015.

In the shorter term, there is an ever-increasing focus on improving the service to Severn Trent’s customers. One of our biggest challenges is ensuring that our processes and contracts are not only delivering the required outputs in terms of doing the job, but also delivering them in a way that keeps our customers happy.  Our job in procurement, therefore, is to ensure that we build mechanisms into our contracts which drives our supply chain towards delivering customer service as well as the technical outputs.