Sardesai has worked across across construction, architecture and property development. He studied for his bachelor’s degree in architecture in India, and completed an MSc in construction project management at Queen’s University Belfast.
He said, “I’ve been interested in architecture and tall buildings since I was a child. That interest never really moved on. I still spend my days on high-rise buildings, just from the safety and compliance side now rather than the drawing board.
“I trained as an architect in India, but I always wanted more involvement in the project than just designing it. I wanted to know how the structure actually got built. After my Bachelor degree I deliberately went to site rather than into a studio.
“Those years when I was site-based, spending every day with contractors, are the ones that shaped me most. That’s where I learned how a design actually works on site: what’s buildable, what sequence it has to go in, where a detail is going to fail, and how a decision made on a drawing plays out in cost and programme. You don’t get that from a screen.”
A chartered member of the CIOB, Sardesai has taken key roles in a variety of projects in the UK, such as hotel and leisure developments, residential, care and commercial builds, including a 21-storey higher-risk building (HRB). As an APS-registered Principal Designer Building Regulations (PDBR), he has successfully guided projects through the Gateway 2 stage, securing building control approval from the Building Safety Regulator.
His experience of the building control regime for HRBs brings additional depth to the expertise in the 11-strong Building Safety Act team, Pick Everard says, and he will take the lead on compliance on several flagship new build and remediation contracts.
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