Meet the team

Simon has spent over 30 years helping businesses win and deliver work, starting as a graduate engineer at Bechtel and working on site in Hong Kong before moving into bidding with Thales.

He went on to run a sixteen-strong worldwide bid office at Acision, then led tendering at Alstom UK, where his team of eleven hit sales targets year on year and he negotiated what was then the largest ever signalling contract, worth over £100m, for Crossrail.

Since 2017 he has worked as a consultant and senior technical writer on major infrastructure bids, supporting winning tenders including London Power Tunnels Phase 2, the Great Grid Partnership and the Lower Thames Crossing. He has also worked client-side for Network Rail, providing cost assurance on a £1.5bn full business case through to Treasury submission. He currently supports bid management at HOCHTIEF (UK).

Simon holds a BEng (Hons) in Mechanical and Production Engineering. Outside work he swims, cycles and plays golf.

At 49th Floor Consulting, Simon is director, leads every bid we take on and is the client’s single point of contact. The team behind him produces the content, and he brings his engineering background, years of running bid teams and hands-on estimating experience to each one, so every answer is technically sound, properly costed and written to win.

Vanessa is a journalist and author with over three decades’ experience in the publishing industry. She has worked at a strategic level in digital publishing in both the UK and Asia, setting up successful brands such as NetDoctor and managing content production processes for companies including Yahoo! and AOL. Her experience includes time spent at commercial agencies and communication consultancies, creating advertising copy, as well as technical documentation and academic papers.

Vanessa has written for consumer, trade and B2B titles and she specialises in communicating complex concepts in an engaging and accurate way, with a focus on teasing out the real stories behind the headlines. Her work has appeared in nationals such as The Telegraph, The Mirror and The Express and popular newsstand publications such as Woman’s Own, Fabulous magazine and Bella as well as a variety of indie and niche press. Vanessa is the author of six traditionally-published non-fiction books.

Vanessa is also a competent speaker and has appeared on television, radio and podcasts, playing the part of both interviewer and guest. She has hosted panel discussions and participated in roundtable discussions in a variety of settings including literary festivals, libraries, museums and academic institutions.

At 49th Floor Consulting, Vanessa brings that experience to every bid: shaping the story, sharpening the language and editing answers so they read clearly, consistently and persuasively. She also writes and looks after the content of this website.

For the past two years Cassie has produced the people and sustainability content for 49th Floor Consulting’s bids. She researches and drafts the answers on workforce skills and employment, community engagement, social value, carbon management and the move to a green economy, ready for the bid lead to shape with each client.

Alongside this she is in the third year of a Human Geography degree at Swansea University, which looks at how people, communities, economies and the environment interact. Those are the same issues clients now score in their social value and sustainability questions, so what she studies goes straight into our tenders. She also holds A levels in Geography, Psychology and English Language.

At 49th Floor Consulting, she puts her studies to work on the people and sustainability sections of our bids: workforce skills and employment, community engagement, social value, carbon management and the move to a green economy. She turns a bidder’s commitments into clear, evidenced answers that show real benefit to local people and places.

For the past year Tula has run marketing for 49th Floor Consulting and worked as part of our bid production team, preparing, checking and formatting submissions so they go out complete, compliant and on time.

Alongside this she is studying for a Marketing degree, so the brand, content and campaign work she does for us draws on current practice.

At 49th Floor Consulting, she puts that learning straight into practice. She runs our marketing, looking after our brand, LinkedIn presence and campaigns so the right clients hear about our work, and supports the bid team when deadlines are tight by helping to prepare, check and format submissions.

Andrew is an associate of 49th Floor and the founder of Verbid Ltd, which he set up in 2016 to provide work-winning services to infrastructure and construction organisations. We bring him in when a bid needs his specialist experience.

Through Verbid he has supported Tier 1 and Tier 2 work-winning teams and helped secure over £10bn of contracts in the transport, energy, water and commercial sectors, in the UK and Canada. Before that, as a senior consultant at PCSG (now Bentley Systems), he was embedded in client bid teams on UK and international opportunities worth over £40bn, usually as bid manager.

Andrew has led work-winning departments at Aggregate Industries, where bidding activity more than doubled to around 550 opportunities a year, and at F M Conway, where he helped the group win partnership contracts across eighteen London boroughs. His career began on site with Wimpey, and he has run construction businesses as a regional director and general manager.

He holds a BSc (Hons) in Building Administration, is a Member of the Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation, and holds the APMP Foundation Certificate.

At 49th Floor Consulting, Andrew joins bids that need extra senior bid management. He brings his experience of leading Tier 1 and Tier 2 work-winning teams across transport, energy and water to the bid strategy, plan and reviews.