Our wonderful team are our greatest asset. Not only experts in transport, engineering and placemaking but also committed to delivering better places for people through high-level-service client experiences.

We’re very proud to continue to celebrate the faces behind the fast-growing international consultancy that we are today in our monthly feature ‘PJA People’.

Next up in our series is Associate Director Catherine Phillips, based in our Birmingham office:

Tell us what you do at PJA

I’m a Chartered Landscape Architect and work as an Associate Director in the Birmingham office and I’m going to be growing the landscape team in the Midlands. I’m keen to develop our landscape offering and can provide advice on all landscape issues relating to projects including masterplanning through to on site implementation.

What’s your career path so far?

I worked for 21 years in an engineering firm called Halcrow that was subsequently taken over by an American firm now known as Jacobs.

I worked on a great variety of projects in the time I was there including overseas, and it has given me lots of different project type experience.  Those that spring to mind for the overseas work include: designing an outside space for a New York after school club housed in recycled shipping containers in a Brooklyn port; a landscape and visual impact assessment of a new hotel complex in Gibraltar; and, designing the hard and soft landscape for under and beside a new 1.5 km long viaduct in Doha, Qatar.

Projects closer to home have sent me all over the country on highway infrastructure projects, flood risk management and public realm schemes and before I left, I’d been on site for three years as a Landscape Clerk of Works advising client and contractor of environmental site management and soft landscape implementation.

I’ve worked for public and private sector clients and in multi-disciplinary teams.  I enjoy working in this environment, communicating landscape issues with the wider project team and working collaboratively with them to protect the landscape.  I am really looking forward to working with others in PJA doing just that and sharing my knowledge with new recruits as we grow the team.

What do you enjoy when you’re not working?

I love to sew and make my own clothes or things for the house.  I also love to cook.  I qualified as a yoga teacher in 2018 and whilst I’m not teaching any classes at the moment, I really enjoyed training in a new skill and building a small business of my own.  I try to practice as often as I can, as I know it’s really good for me when I do.  As a family we share a common interest in riding bikes, so we do that as much as we can.  We also love to travel and we’re fortunate that my sister lives in the alps in France so we get to do lots of trips out both for skiing and for summer breaks.

Are you a dog or cat person?

Definitely a cat person.  We have two black cats (which my husband still can’t tell apart even after 9 years!)

What are you currently reading or listening to?

I listen to the Maisie Hill podcast weekly and I’m trying to read Captain Corelli’s Mandolin having been to Kefalonia in May half term.

Claim to fame?

I was once on TV for a British kitchen show having watched it being filmed all day – I went there on one of my first days away having had my first baby which was a while ago now…and I can’t remember what it was called!  I also was a ball girl for the Dow Classic at Edgbaston which used to be the ladies tournament to be at the week before Wimbledon.  I was on court when Martina Navratilova was playing.

Catherine Phillips, Associate Director

Catherine has over 20 years’ experience in landscape architecture. She has worked on a range of development projects including highway and flood defence schemes, public realm and infrastructure projects and residential and commercial developments on brownfield and greenfield sites.

In recent years, she has acted as lead landscape architect on several projects for the Environment Agency including site based work, acting as Landscape Clerk of Works. This builds on a wider range of landscape experience including green and blue infrastructure, infrastructure landscaping and town centre public realm.

Get in touch with Catherine: [email protected]

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