IT'S hard to imagine the immaculate Michael Oglesby in overalls and grappling with pipes and drains. But for three years, after leaving school at 16, the executive chairman of property group Bruntwood Estates was an apprentice plumber to his father, before both realised it wasn't working and he went to college to do a degree in building.

He recalls: "I come from a very working class background in Scunthorpe, from a large family where I was the first to go to college. It was not the norm."

Several decades on, he sits in gleaming offices on the 24th floor of City Tower, from where he can look down on the city where Bruntwood has been a powerful and high-profile presence during Manchester's reincarnation.

Oglesby, too, is a towering presence. Over 6ft, with a mop of sandy hair, he defies his 70 years with a daily swim to keep fit and a daunting workload. He may have handed the reins of Bruntwood to his son, Chris, in 2002, but now channels his considerable energies into trying to give back to a region he acknowledges has been good to him.

He is chair of governors of the Royal Northern College of Music, on the steering board for the Manchester Cancer Research Centre, chair of MIDAS, involved with the Manchester University Global Leadership Board and Manchester International Festival and is leading the project team to deliver a concert hall and new school for Chetham's.

He was High Sheriff of Greater Manchester in 2007, and last year vice-Lord Lieutenant. He actively supports a wealth of varied charities both personally, through the Oglesby Charitable Trust, and corporately through the Bruntwood Community Fund.

So why, with a family wealth estimated at over £200m and a track record of achievement both commercial and altruistic, does he keep on saying yes to things?

He barks a laugh: "I cannot think of anything I would want to do that would give me more satisfaction and pleasure than what I am doing now.

"The mix is extremely stimulating and one of the most enjoyable parts is the people. I meet such a huge variety from all walks of life, some of the most intelligent and artistically gifted people in the country, and to be able to sit down and talk to them and for them to feel that I may have something to offer them - and perhaps even contribute - is something that delights and continually surprises me.

"Of course there are rainy mornings when I am driving into the office and I think why am I doing this at my age, when I could be off sailing but, once I get into whatever it is, then it is very rewarding."

It may seem that Bruntwood has always been a part of the Manchester cityscape, but Mr Oglesby says there was never a grand plan and building the business was far from easy.

"There has been a certain amount of `happenchance', but basically a bloody lot of hard work," he said.

He spent his twenties running projects on construction sites around Lincolnshire, and describes the decade as tough. In the early 1970s he took a job running operations in the north east for the Lyon Group, then the largest independent property group in the country and when, two weeks into the job, his counterpart in the north west left, he arrived in Manchester for the first time.

Then came the 70s crash, he found himself out of a job and learned a harsh lesson.

"I had a small property company that had backing from a couple of people who in the end did not deliver the funds they promised," he says. "I had to renege on deals and let people down and it was dreadful and the worst mistake I have ever made. But it taught me to always know where the money is coming from."

In 1978, he formed the partnership which became Bruntwood - named after the street his partner lived on.

Within eight years he was sole shareholder, buying and developing property for the engineering sector.

"It is hard to describe just how difficult things were then," he recalls. "Not just the fact that the economy was bad but Manchester was in a totally different place to where it is today. And in the 80s crash things got even worse. Manchester had already lost cotton, but then engineering and manufacturing went down like a pack of cards. These were our main markets, and we lost a third of our customers in six months."

In a spell that would prove pivotal, instead of retreating he expanded, seizing opportunities as firms folded and making the crucial switch from industrial property to offices.

By the early 1990s, Bruntwood had built up a substantial portfolio and he says: "At that stage we were still very much heads down, working to grow the company. But then the city woke up, and we in turn started to be more outward looking.

"Everyone points to the IRA bomb of 1996 as being the marker, but things were already changing - it simply speeded up the process."

He says neither Chris nor daughter Kate, who is now HR director, were pressured into joining the company, but says that, from them being teenagers, talk around the table at home in Bowdon would often be about how the business worked and plans in the pipeline.

He reveals that there is an `Oglesby Constitution' on how the family members will work within the business: what is and is not allowed, how non-family members can be accommodated and how involvement has to be earned on merit.

He explains: "Setting it down so everyone knows the rules does away with conflict. It may not be this generation or the next, but I have seen fourth and fifth generation family firms dissolve because of disputes. I want to avoid that.

"Everyone needs to understand how it operates."

The family shareholding is `complex', but he says his priority is to protect what he has built up, although he warns that the current downturn is not going to end any time soon and conditions could be tough for years.

"We have overindulged, both on a national and personal scale. It could not continue."

He visited Africa for the first time earlier this year and is now committed to offering practical help, in the form of building new schools for Aids orphans in Uganda and Tanzania.

He said: "If you want to see harsh economics, go there. But the children's enthusiasm and friendship is infectious and their gratitude humbling."

It is this faith and investment in people that has obviously been as much of a driver as anything.

"It is all about people," he says. "Whether it's your own staff or the ones running the businesses that occupy your buildings. They have to be the first consideration. I would like to think that people feel I am fair, that we operate from an ethical and moral business, and I think that if you are going to live and work in a city and enjoy it you have to treat people as you would expect to be treated."

Away from the city and work, he has a proper sailing boat, a house in Cumbria and enjoys spending time with his five grandchildren with his wife, Jean, to whom he has been married for more than 40 years.

He says: "I am very fortunate to have a fantastic life but it has been extremely hard and there have been times when no, it has not been a lot of fun.

"But if you do not have the lows, you do not learn to appreciate the highs." Tweet