A small group of us at Cardinal Ltd and Compass Resourcing have decided that we would like to take on a challenge in Mick’s name, therefore we shall be walking Ben Nevis on  the  23rd September which will be a tough yet rewarding challenge, which also seems fitting given Mick’s Scottish heritage. We are hoping to raise money through a form of sponsorship to pass to Mick’s wife Sammi, for her to help pay for things such as the unexpected funeral costs or to donate to a charity of her choosing should she wish. We hope you can support us with our endeavour.

Thank you to Alex Blevins for the following words;

What can I say about our dear friend and fellow professional Mick O’Donnell that has not been said before, I think for all those who attended his funeral, Mick was well liked and thought of within the industry and outside it as well. To all of us he was as a good friend and I have to say he could and did advise me on many things within our day to day work that if I was not sure about I knew Mick would know. The breakfast club was one event every morning where ideas and debate took place while we had breakfast, issues on-site, training ideas that Mick would put forward, one of those ideas was to set the training room up as a site office which we did and is there today. H&S training ethics, bringing site managers on was uppermost in his mind and he always had time for anyone who wanted to learn and get on within the company. When Mick first joined the company he was a chargehand way back at Colliers Wood M&S even at that time he was always taking the lead and enforcing his work ethics to all who worked under him on site. He moved very quickly up the ranks with his works in China for the company and he was always requested by the PM team to work on their particular site as they knew without a doubt that Mick could be relied upon 100%.

Mick and myself worked as a team together on the first DSGI main contracting project at Chesterfield with Stephen Sherriff as the PM, it was there that Mick came to the fore in my eyes it was a true team effort from start to finish and boy Mick new his stuff and I admired him for it, as I am sure many of you do today. From there Mick went on to bigger and better things in the company and was respected by everyone who worked with him or for him on site, I have never heard a bad word spoken about Mick which is unheard of in our game. Both of us always said that where was the next generation of project managers coming from, that had our zest for achievement and will to win not forgetting the knowledge we had as we grew up in the industry. Mick was sure what we as a company were promoting and with the work that Joanne was doing on training, the apprentices and the NVQ modules that more and more of the managers were getting involved with would pay dividends in the long term for the company, it may not produce another Mick O’Donnell but it was going in the right direction.

The untimely death of Mick was a major blow to me personally and I know to Joanne and few others as well, but I am sure that Mick has left a mark on all of us that his efforts and work ethics will not be forgotten , and I know that he is looking down on us and somewhere on a site someone is asking themselves WHAT WOULD MICK DO HERE?