Consultant Naval Architect and Engineer Andrew Comley
Meet Andrew
IPSE membership covers an amazingly diverse range of self-employed people, with thousands of freelancers, contractors and consultants. Every individual has valuable knowledge, experience and insight in building their business and career, including ‘accidental contractor’ Andrew Comley.
In addition to being self-employed in a fascinating industry for many years, Andrew also shares his insight into how working for himself with Asperger’s makes his business stand out, and how he uses the flexibility of freelancing to manage chronic pain.
Can you introduce yourself and your business?
I’m Andrew Comley, I’m a consultant naval architect and engineer. We also have a small fabrication business as part of the work we undertake, and I’m probably best described as the accidental contractor.
So, an accidental contractor is a person who never actually intended to become a contractor, but was offered freelance work for a company that they used to work for. They felt it was better that I came in as a freelancer, so it was completely by accident.
Are there any projects or client work that you’re particularly proud of?
No. And the simple answer is, because I don’t do pride. That’s quite important to me and I prefer to be humble. If one is proud, then one tends to get a bit full of oneself, and that’s when one starts making mistakes.
And we all make mistakes all the time. So being humble, it’s also a lot easier to admit to mistakes, and say to a client, “you know what, I ballsed up, I need to sort it out”.
What would you say is your greatest business achievement since becoming self-employed?
Not yet going bust after 14 years? There’s been a bit of pressure over the last couple of years, and we go through peaks and troughs. I’d be the first to say I hate admin and I’m not great with finances.
And actually the flip side of Asperger’s is that I don’t get the value of money. Money doesn’t actually mean anything to me, it’s just something I can use to buy stuff. Normally we get paid by BACs and every so often a client will pay by cheque and you see the actual amount written on a piece of paper, and you’re like really? That much?
But yes, staying in business with the usual cashflow dilemmas that you get with overdue invoices, and it’s for a long-term client, so you can only apply so much pressure.
How has mountain biking and exercise helped you find a work life balance?
So we actually have to start away from mountain biking. I’m going through a divorce and we separated during lockdown. You can imagine still living in the same house during a lockdown is an interesting time.
So I ended up going out on my bike each day just to get some exercise and clear my head. And then I found my ambitions and skill had a slight mismatch, shall we say. So I decided to go and get some coaching to be safer. And from there, that led me into mountain bike racing, and it becomes addictive, basically.
I used to ride a lot when I was younger, but hadn’t done so much for the last few years. I don’t like watching TV all evening. I’m an active person, and so this allowed me to get back to doing what I like to do. I pretty much train five or six times a week for mountain biking. But that goes between sitting on an indoor bike on good old Zwift, being out on the road bike, in a coaching session or doing work with a PT.
So it has multiple benefits in terms of lowering my pain levels, getting me out in the fresh air, and because I make myself do group sessions when they’re available, it also gives me social interaction with a variety of people. And it focuses me not to live as a hermit, basically, which would be my preferred state most of the time!
Freelancing helps because I train most mornings, and so I won’t get to my desk until 10 or 11 o’clock. And then every two weeks, I’ve got a coaching session which takes up a Wednesday morning, for instance. Or I’ve got mates who will ring and ask if I fancy going for a ride, and that’s not a problem. It allows that flexibility, as long as I’m still getting my minimum number of hours done.
I know how important it is, because last summer I burnt out on a big investigation followed by a whole big set of analyses. Because I was working so many hours, I wasn’t getting out, and I literally burned out, which is an Asperger’s trait. And it pretty much wiped out September.
