Life as an MBA student is not for the disorganised. This is doubly true when you’re trying to combine the qualification with a new senior management job and raising two children – oh, and being made redundant halfway through.

Michelle Tilley, the group health and safety director at Byrne Group, a construction company, began her career in construction almost 20 years ago after a summer job in a technical drawing office steered her away from her earlier artistic ambitions.

In this time she garnered extensive management experience, but while considering a construction-related masters degree a few years ago she began to worry that her single-industry specialisation would make it harder to move into other sectors and could also make her career vulnerable to a downturn in the sector.

“I decided that moving into a broader management qualification would help me in the future,” she says. “I wanted to be able to go and work for, say, Barclays or NatWest. I don’t think you can move out of construction and be taken seriously unless you have something like this under your belt. Even moving into director roles within the industry you need broader management expertise.”

She decided on an executive modular MBA at Henley Management College, both for its reputation and for the flexibility that the programme offered. “Having a young family at the time – 14 and 2 – meant that this was important. I needed time for my career, my children, my husband and myself.”

Not that much of the time that she had for herself could exactly count as free time. During the first year of the two-year programme, she spent about 20 hours a week studying; during the final six months that rose to at least 30 hours a week on top of her other duties. In the first year of her course, her company – which had agreed the MBA as part of her joining package a year before – gave her time off to attend campus-based modules, but finding the time for everything else was up to her. The trick? A diary scheduling everything from housework and family time to meetings and academic deadlines. “My time was managed almost to the minute,” she says with a laugh, although it seems unlikely that this is a joke.

Even being made redundant in the autumn of 2005 wasn’t enough to throw her off course. “It was disruptive but in some ways it made me stronger. I realised that life doesn’t end when you’re made redundant. I had several job offers and had to make a choice about where to take my career.”

Initially she spent time doing consultancy in the City – proving to herself that the MBA had indeed equipped her to move between sectors – before joining Byrne Group. Back in construction, yes, but in such an interesting job that it feels like a complete change. “The role here provides me with so much challenge. It’s a very senior and strategic role. The MBA has done exactly what I’d hoped. It has taken me from an operational role into a strategic one.”

It also gave her the opportunity to bring her financial skills up to the level needed for such senior roles. “One of my key weaknesses was finance. Now I am confident in that area. I can look at a company’s accounts and establish if it’s worth investing in.”

She also praises the course for its emphasis on teamwork and for the way it helped her to learn how to learn – an important skill for senior managers, who are expected to get to grips with new issues quickly and effectively.