Luca Webb (2019, History) is a former Michael Bishop Foundation Thatcher Scholar and the current Head of Communications at TSL Group.
Five years ago, Luca Webb was finishing his History degree at Somerville. At the time, most of his friends were eyeing the Big Three management consultancies or Civil Service Fast Track for their first career moves. But Luca chose a different path, joining a construction group specialising in advanced manufacturing facilities.
Luca spoke with Somerville earlier this year to explain how he made his unorthodox decision – and why he’s never looked back.
Luca during his undergraduate years. Credit: Jack Evans
“In the summer of my second year at Somerville, I was working in a small shop in my home town when Jackie Wild, CEO of TSL Group, came in. We got talking about her company, and she suggested I come and do some work experience there.”
TSL had fairly humble origins, having started 24 years previously in West Drayton. “But even then, the vision of Jackie and Michael, her business partner, was clear,” Luca explains. “They had seen how capital projects could be run differently with a more systematic and collaborative approach.”
Luca suggests that one way to understand the innovative ethos of the Group is through sister company SmartParc, a new ‘food manufacturing’ business park model. “The key to the SmartParc concept is that the entire facility is built specifically with the intention of integrating multiple food production businesses on one site, and creating value from their sympathetic needs. For example, a SmartParc facility will capture the waste heat from a one company’s refrigeration to heat other buildings across the site.
TSL applies the same sustainable, circular economy principles to its other projects, and interest from the business community has been strong. Today, TSL is acting as construction partner on a range of hyperscale data centre projects alongside a major automotive project and an advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, to name a few.
“It’s been amazing to watch this happen in real-time,” Luca says. “I arrived here in 2022, when TSL was running a turnover of approximately £450 million. Today, we’re operating in more than 15 countries, and recently surpassed well over £1 billion in annual revenue.”
At the heart of this rapid growth, Luca believes, is TSL’s entrepreneurial spirit. “I like to say the culture here is more like a honeycomb than a hierarchy,” Luca explains. “That flat hierarchy is best summed up by the fact that, right from the moment I arrived, Jackie invited me to shadow her, to attend senior meetings, and to take the lead on a range of internal projects. I was given permission to operate with and learn a huge amount from those at the highest level from the very start of my time with the business.”
The benefit of a flat management structure, Luca adds, is that you don’t feel like a small cog in a massive operation. “You’re literally there, seeing innovation happen and tracking the impact of your own work in real-time.”
Anyone who wants to replicate the excitement of intellectual discovery from their degrees should consider a business like TSL
The unparalleled levels of opportunity Luca has encountered at TSL is why he doesn’t hesitate to encourage other Somervillians to join the Group if they want a different kind of challenge. Indeed, since joining the business in 2022, Luca has returned to Somerville several times to work with Claire Cockcroft, Director of the Somerville Skills Hub, on defining internships for current students.
Many of these internships have led to long-term opportunities within TSL. Tia Dabare (2021, Law) has risen to become an In-House Legal Counsel in business, handling complex contracts across multiple continents. Illia Skarha-Bandurov (2022, Computer Science) has transformed TSL’s internal systems architecture. Emma Toner (2023, Law), another lawyer, has nonetheless gone in a completely different direction from Tia, and now works on TSL’s ESG strategy as well as taking a key role in international regulatory and compliance matters.
Fellow Scholar Dayin Wijaya (2022, MPhil Economics), who received the Oxford Qatar Thatcher Scholarship, also works for the Group as a Research Analyst, providing a diverse portfolio of analytics for senior leaders. Also joining TSL via internships have been Sheng Dong (2024, Computer Science), whose computer science expertise has proved invaluable in the continued development of TSL’s internal systems, and Tarka Abraham (2023, Biochemistry), who has advised how SmartParc facilities can support food systems of the future.
“I’m not saying this environment is right for everyone,” Luca says by way of conclusion. “But anyone who wants to replicate the excitement of intellectual discovery from their degrees should consider a business like TSL. I rarely know exactly what I’m going to encounter each week at work, and that is what has maintained the intellectual excitement for me.”
TSL colleagues Emma Toner (ESG Reporting & Compliance Manager), Luca Webb (Head of Communications), Tia Dabare (In-House Legal) and Dayin Wijaya (Research Analyst)