People

As a B Corp, Social Enterprise, and Investors in People (Silver) we do business differently. We are a close-knit family of collaborative, multidisciplinary creative thinkers able to respond to challenges by creating a team of experts that match the project—and the planet’s—needs.

Twenty-one years ago we came together to form the Useful Simple Trust, an employee-owned Trust, joining our sister companies Useful Projects Thomas.Matthews Useful Studio and Think Up. Our unique organisation means that clients benefit from our team’s depth of experience, as well as our rich understanding of wider practice in the built environment.

Being part of the Useful Simple Trust means the Expedition team is highly motivated and committed—because our values mean that our combined success is shared equitably. We share part of our profit, and re-invest the rest in research, social value, and environmental projects.

Image Credit: Team London Bridge / Mickey Lee

Working at Expedition

At Expedition we value everyone’s contribution. Our positive mentoring and coaching programme encourages all our engineers to be curious and creative in the way they learn and develop their skills. We are committed to transparency, and measure and report our journey towards a more equal diverse and inclusive practice. Find out more about how we do this below.

Working Practices

By thinking collectively, we learn from insights and innovations within our teams. We also draw on the depth of knowledge and experience of the Trust. We value collaboration highly, which means we experiment and evolve new ways of working together – within the Trust, and externally with clients and partners.

The advent of hybrid working has brought new challenges and opportunities, but the oversight of every person and every project remains a critical part of our processes.

Creative and Social

We like to celebrate success, so it’s never hard to find a reason to come together for a drink or a meal. We also like to get together creatively, and regularly join forces on our Useful Giving projects. Sometimes we share ideas on design retreats in the woods, and twice a year all our Trustees and benefactors meet up to remember and reflect on why we do what we do.

Our team also enjoys breakfast yoga, all-weather touch rugby, walks along the River Thames, lunchtime table tennis, family picnics, charity races – in fact, anything positive and low impact that makes us feel good about the day.

Learning & Development

As part of our Trust ethos, we believe strongly in coaching and developing every person at the Trust. For our young graduates this starts with working towards ICE Chartership, but everyone gets involved in our weekly lunchtime programme of talks and design reviews so we never miss a chance to learn from each other.

More formal learning is driven by our Future Skills Programme, which is set to achieve Carbon Literacy Platinum level.

Knowledge Sharing

We are committed to sharing our knowledge across the construction industry, including through our well-publicised initiatives, such as the Get it Right Initiative. This is an industry analysis and report, leading to training programmes eliminating errors in construction.

Our engineers sit on key industry panels and speak regularly at webinars and events across the UK; we are a small company, but you can see how far our influence reaches when you Meet the Team.

Many of us also teach Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes around the UK, and we’re proud to have pioneered the not-for-profit Constructionarium. This is a real-life learning programme that has taught over 13000 engineering undergraduates since it began in 2004.

In 2021 we ran an 8-week design programme for Schools 21 with a group of sixth form students to promote widening participation in design and engineering. As is often the case with EDI, we learnt as much from the students as they did from us.

Chelsea Flower Show sculpture: working through some early concepts

Fulfilling the Trust ethos by coaching and mentoring our people to achieve the right balance of skills

Personal reflection

"I was elected by my colleagues to serve 3 years as a Trustee when I was 26 – an opportunity I can’t imagine getting anywhere else! I learnt so much about how the Trust is run, how being employee-owned affects how we do things and how the employees are kept central to all business decisions. The experience made me a better communicator and, therefore, a better engineer."

Ailsa

Principal Engineer