Carl Asquith

Carl Asquith is a founder and Director of the CGLA group of companies.

Working with fellow Directors Vicki Davis, and CEO Ruth Marshall, Carl manages the operations of the companies, focussing in particular on the Landscaping operations and provision of costings to clients. Carl also takes a hands-on role in the management of some of our larger projects alongside his highly experienced project management team. He is the main link between the design team and the landscaping operations, ensuring that the design intent is fully understood and translated into the final results for our clients.

Carl also works closely with Emma Asquith who runs the CGLA maintenance team to manage their operations and continuing development, and takes a broader role within all of the businesses overseeing Health and Safety (with our dedicated Health and Safety officer)

Carl has perhaps the broadest role within the leadership team, and his ability to get to grips with this breadth of scope and to shift from strategic overview to dealing with specific issues make him a critical part of the team.

His understanding of both design and landscaping mean that he is valued as an advisor to designers, clients and construction teams-seeking build solutions to design challenges as well as capturing and delivering changes and updates.

His 25 years of practical building knowledge, based in having put in the “hard yards” at the coal face of construction and grounds maintenance are second to none. His first-hand experience of construction of all manner of items, from the basic landscaping elements through to the weird and wonderful things that our clients and designers throw at us are a resource that would be hard to find elsewhere. Unafraid to say if he doesn’t know the answer to something, he is dogged in finding out the answer if one is to be had. If it can be built Carl will find a way to do it!

ACHIEVEMENTS

Carl led the construction and planning of the CGLA RHS Gold medal winning garden at RHS Hampton Court. Organising and running the detailed pre-build as well as managing logistics and dealing with the curve-balls that always happen at a show, Carl alongside Ruth, Vicki, and the Landscaping team, created a stunning garden that was also crowned “Best Summer Garden”.

Carl plays a crucial role in assisting the design team to create designs in a way that can be built, and then translating their wonderful schemes into something that the construction teams can build from.

He is a team player who is prepared to muck in with anything and everything that needs to be done. Managing internal processes and costings take up much of his time, but he has also been instrumental in implementing the CGLA project management software and related internal systems that give our clients and teams 24 hour visibility on their projects.

EARLY CAREER

Carl qualified as a bricklayer and worked in hand-on grounds maintenance before founding CGLA with Ruth Marshall. Initially personally leading and running the landscaping teams on site, Carl then moved into managing the operations teams and costings, professionalising the approach to value-engineering and increasing the visibility on costs for our discerning clients.

Carls deep interest in build methodology has led to him learning 3D cad modelling to allow him to better understand the designers intent and to help him to translate this into real world construction.

APPROACH

Carl is a calm and loyal individual, always prepared to go the extra mile to assist his clients and team. As a karate brown-belt he is controlled and dedicated, and that translates into his work. An honest and trustworthy person, he can be utterly relied on to make good decisions on behalf of the business and his clients.