Mike Dean, Quantity Surveyor

Mike Dean was born in North London. He was interested in model making, and good at maths, but left school when he aged 16. His father suggested quantity surveying and Mike started work as a junior in an office in Holborn, finding that the role suited his abilities. He explains the role of the quantity surveyor in setting up and managing building projects. Mike took professional exams while working and enjoyed team-working with architects and engineers. After seven years he moved to a bigger firm, in Tottenham Court Road, but found he didn’t enjoy their huge projects; so he sought work outside London. In 1969 he joined Henry Cooper & Sons, a progressive firm setting up an office in Stony Stratford, two years after the MK Development Corporation had been formed, anticipating work on the new city. Mike moved to Stony Stratford and in 1970 got married. As one of a team of quantity surveyors at Henry Cooper’s, he worked on early projects for MKDC and recalls this as an exciting time, working with new young architects in MKDC. He left Cooper’s in 1971, worked briefly in Northants County Council, but found this unsatisfying. When invited in 1972 to join Wilford Bros., builders in Newport Pagnell, and work on building projects in Milton Keynes, he ‘ jumped at that’.