“THE kids are getting really excited – they keep looking at the forecast and telling me how warm it’s going to be.”

As you read this, Gavin Scotchbrook will be in Portugal, basking in temperatures of nearly 30C.

The scene will be a far cry from the North-East’s stuttering summer.

But Mr Scotchbrook is well versed in moving from the ridiculous to the sublime.

A quick glance at his CV is evidence of such.

When he was younger, Mr Scotchbrook worked on Teesside as a Northumbrian Water lab technician.

He was charged with testing raw sewage for poisonous elements.

Looking back, he recoils at his pungent memories.

“I was a poo sampler”, he says matter-of-factly.

“The sewage would get pulled up from the ground, I would get the sample and if it had been sat, you had to shake it.

“It just stunk.

“I couldn’t do it; it made me baulk.”

Thankfully, his experiences were short, if a little malodourous, and today Mr Scotchbrook is chief operations officer at IT company Agile Group.

The business, based in Stockton, offers IT support and equipment, telecoms, internet connections and network services, and previously launched a 4,000sq ft hub to give customers greater space to store equipment and data through cloud computing.

Employing about 40 staff, Agile has grown significantly over the last few years as industry word spreads.

Mr Scotchbrook said it has every intention of taking advantage of that clamour to create more jobs and continue the firm’s expansion.

He said: “We have got a really good foundation and our owner has said he’s never been so pleased with where we are.

“Things are in place now to push on.

“When you have more staff the wage bill becomes bigger, so you have to grow.

“Our growth has been non-stop and we are always looking for new salespeople.

“That is something that will continue.

“Also, in an industry that’s constantly evolving, cloud computing is the next best thing.

“Offering our own data centre means we can deliver effective solutions before competitors.

“Our customer base is constantly growing and their IT needs are changing.

“We want to give customers quicker access to markets and by launching our own data centre, we will help businesses do that.”

Agile is also known for a marine service connecting vessels with their operators on dry land, which he says improves connectivity and quickly gets data back to headquarters from whichever waters a ship may be in.

He added: “Teesside is well connected to the oil and gas sector and we have got involved in that.

“A vessel might go out to do some sampling, though it may take three weeks to get there and three weeks to get back.

“But we live in a McDonald’s world and people want the information once that sampling has been done so they can deal with it.”