KNOWLES TEAM | Q & A with Mantas Rimavicius, Knowles’ Health and Safety Assistant

We interviewed Mantas Rimavicius, Knowles’ newly appointed Health and Safety Assistant to find out more about his career so far. Mantas originally started with Knowles in 2015 as labourer progressed to site foreman where Mantas’ skills and eye for Health & Safety were evident.

In 2020 Mantas expressed his interest to evolve into a Health & Safety role, and today in 2021, we are very pleased to have him a part of our growing internal health & safety department – an essential part of Knowles. 

Knowles encourage progression across all our site teams and we are pleased to share Mantas’ story!

Firstly, can you give us an overview on yourself and your career history with Knowles?

I came to England at the age of 19 from Lithuania – and on my second day in London I started working at Knowles. It was my first experience in construction, and I was interested in the industry and started as a labourer to learn from the very beginning. With my colleagues help, I’ve built strong knowledge foundations and slowly I started stepping up in Assistant Site Manager and Supervisor roles, where my skills developed both on site and in administrative paperwork, especially health & safety – and here I am now.

What do you wish you knew in the early part of your career that would influence you and your role today?

To be honest, I got a lot of experience in the early part of my career which helped me gain a lot of knowledge about construction and especially temporary works – which are heavily involved in every Knowles project.

What are the key moments in your career?

Key moments were when I started working with a lot of responsibilities, organizing activities on sites, and becoming a supervisor at work, attending many courses and developing and gaining further advanced qualifications. The most memorable moment was when I started to get involved in Health & Safety. Over the years I have met a lot of smart people in Knowles which allowed me to gain further experience and knowledge about my new role and who I’m now.

What are you most excited about for your new role with Knowles?

I’m most excited to help improve systems at work, reduce any risks and give advice on how to do it better. I enjoy communicating with people who are happy and like to work with existing Health & Safety standards and see how we grow as a company.

What are you most passionate about?

My passion has always been doing a job right and properly, but in all these years I develop that most important to do right and safely. Now I can do this 100% and implement that system for our company teams, new people, any workers who need assistance with Health & Safety.

What are the key ways in which you implement change within your team?

First of all, we need to have the right people on the team, who love their job and what they doing. When we start thinking the same then implementing any changes or new systems is very simple and even enjoyable.