Rob Gillespie, director at VINCI Concessions, has announced that he will retire at the end of 2025 after a 40-year career spanning roles at companies including Ringway, Eurovia Group and Colas.
In a LinkedIn post announcing his decision, he stated that it was time for him to ‘hang up the hard hat' to focus more on his family.
He said: 'If I had a recommendation to any much younger colleagues in our sector, it would be to get involved in things other than your day to day work. While your job is hopefully very rewarding, I have found that the extracurricular things you can do and be involved in will magnify your knowledge and experience hugely, and you will meet great people along the way.
'I am really grateful to the organisations I have worked for – only three over the years – the depth of experience and skills across good organisations makes innovation and personal development better if it is embraced and searched out.
'The generosity of colleagues in their knowledge and willingness to share it has been a key to a happy and hopefully successful career. Long may we all be generous in our sharing of knowledge and experience and be willing to accept it from others. The collective highways sector is a massive voice in a key public service; the world changes, but we all need to go somewhere – on a transportation network.'
‘Take care and be kind.'
Mr Gillespie started out at Colas in 1988, where he spent 15 years before moving on to Ringway and its parent companies Eurovia and VINCI.
Among his many other contract successes, from 2013-2016 Mr Gillespie had overall responsibility for the delivery of the Hounslow Highways PFI Project - a 25 year project to rehabilitate and maintain the infrastructure of the west London borough.
The Hounslow PFI has been widely seen as a fairly rare PFI success story - Highways visited the London borough when Mr Gillespie was working there and saw first-hand that Hounslow and Ringway had developed a close and trusting working relationship.
