James Sheppard, Director, Equals Consulting
I am both a chartered project management surveyor and registered architect with over 25 years of consultancy experience. I passionately believe that high quality design should and can be delivered by employing appropriate risk and value management.
I specialise in complex projects with challenging delivery and funding requirements. I focus on motivating teams to achieve success on projects, in a collaborative environment, and have experience of heading up large teams internally and externally. My wide-ranging experience spans cultural, retail, private residential, education and interior fit out.
BIM implementation is a particular area of expertise, and I have held client briefing workshops on the topic with the Home Office. I have previously sat on the CIC London BIM hub and the Improvement & Efficiency Southeast (IESE) BIM Task group and have completed the RICS BIM Project Management course.
I qualified as an architect with Eger Architects in London having worked in Bristol, San Francisco, and Sydney on retail and commercial projects. Relishing the strategic side of the industry, in 2005 I joined Drivers Jonas (later merged with Deloitte) to work as a project manager on some of the major cultural projects of recent years. I led the Culture and Heritage team prior to joining Equals in 2014. I now up the project management team at Equals and works across a variety of sectors.
I completed the IDBE course as part of Cohort 26, after having an ambition to join the course for many years after being recommended by a colleague who graduated from Cohort 11. I have thoroughly enjoyed the course as it has expanded my world view of the industry beyond the day to day process of projects. I expected to be immersed in sustainability, but it widened my understanding of the immediacy of the problem facing us beyond my expectations. I also researched the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) upon retrofit and enabled a deep research project into how digital processes can have a detrimental effect on creative collaboration. The course has immensely improved my world view of the industry and enabled me to offer an alternative aspect to my consultancy advice to clients.