The winners of the ECA’s 2017 Power Players awards have been announced as 26-year-old Joseph Wu, project manager at T Clarke, and 24-year-old Charlie Harwood, branch manager at CEF. The two were named by ECA president Mike Smith during a ceremony at the ED&I Expo, which took place at the NEC in Birmingham on 6-7 September.
Harry Bartle of Chris Bowker Ltd and George Antino of T Clarke were also recognised as finalists in the top four.
Power Players is an initiative run by the ECA in collaboration with a range of industry partners. Its purpose is to recognise and reward some of the leading young people in the engineering and electrotechnical services industry.
Joseph has been recognised for his role as one of the project leads on a major T Clarke development in Stratford. Charlie, meanwhile, became a CEF branch manager after producing impressive sales figures. The two have won several prizes, including a networking trip to the NECA conference in Philadelphia and participation in a fundraising trip to Arctic Finland with the Electrical Industries Charity.
Voting was opened to the public between 9 August and 5 September, and a total of 1754 votes were cast, with Joseph winning 566, and Charlie 532. The two were named the winners out of four finalists, who had been selected by an independent judging panel earlier this year. The panel was led by the ECA’s Steve Martin, and also included Tessa Ogle of the Electrical Industries Charity, Russell Beattie of FETA and Margaret Fitzsimons of the EDA.
“It’s refreshing to see the ECA providing a platform for young professionals within the construction industry and demonstrates that anything can be achieved with hard work and determination,” says winner Josph Wu. “This has been a great experience for me to be involved with and I strongly recommend this initiative to future participants.”
“A massive thank you to everybody involved in helping towards this great achievement, particularly group manager Paul Church and general manager Tony Betteridge for their support and guidance throughout. Also a huge thank you to the ECA for hosting such an amazing initiative – it was fantastic to be a part of it,” added Charlie Harwood.
