When looking at the primary challenges and solutions associated with the UK’s 2020 renewable energy targets for transport and heat, the EUA has highlighted what it considers to be the primary step forward in solving the problem – decarbonising the gas grid, it argues. Most specifically, the 2009 EU Renewable
Safety Is Not An Option Worker wellbeing goes hand in hand with business growth at Eurogold (The Following is a Promoted Article) “No Muddy Boots”, reads the sign at the door of Eurogold’s head office in Huyton near Liverpool. It is a simple, honest request and one that becomes increasingly
Herts Mechanical – The Complete Engineered Solution (The Following is a Promoted Article) With twenty five years of experience as an engineering sub-contractor, Herts Mechanical has both diversified its services and widened its client base. Beginning as a conveyor installer and specialising in the integration of vertical storage machines (carousels),
Conder Allslade – Building Quality with Steel (The Following is a Promoted Article) Steel continues to be the choice material in the construction industry, favoured for its sustainability, durability, versatility and affordability. Operating by those very same tokens, Conder Allslade has secured a resolute identity in the structural steel sector,
BDC 319 : Aug 2024
When looking at the primary challenges and solutions associated with the UK’s 2020 renewable energy targets for transport and heat, the EUA has highlighted what it considers to be the primary step forward in solving the problem – decarbonising the gas grid, it argues. Most specifically, the 2009 EU Renewable Energy Directive set out the goal for 15% of energy consumption in the UK to be found from renewable sources by 2020. To hit this target, the government has subdivided areas of focus to try and see 30% of electricity, 10% of transport and 12% of heat to be found from renewable sources individually – this then allowing for progress to be made more easily, as well as ensuring progress is still made across all areas. Thus far, progress has been praised as being very positive on the electricity front, yet there are worries that transport and heat targets may not actually be achievable for us to hit by 2020. As such, the EUA, as explained by Head of External Affairs, Isaac Occhipinti, believes that the 2020 target for renewable energy target is not one appropriate for the overarching goal of lowering UK carbon emissions as a whole. Urging the Energy & Climate Change Committee to take a step away from “arbitrary and ineffective” targets for 2020, the EUA instead wishes to pin focus upon decarbonisation of the grid as a way of making progress. Isaac Occhipinti went on to say: “The only sensible, cost effective and deliverable solution to decarbonising hear it by ‘greening’ our gas. It can be done, it can be delivered effectively, and it is already being done on a small scale across the country.” He also went on to highlight that in “The Future of Gas”, written by National Grid, it could be seen that circa 50% of heat energy may be able to see supply from biogases by 2050, thus providing a renewable source of heat to residential homes across the grid without any action needed by the homeowner. As such, this is being regarded as a potential for where focus should instead be laid, looking to aim for achievable and meaningful targets.
Safety Is Not An Option Worker wellbeing goes hand in hand with business growth at Eurogold (The Following is a Promoted Article) “No Muddy Boots”, reads the sign at the door of Eurogold’s head office in Huyton near Liverpool. It is a simple, honest request and one that becomes increasingly revealing the better you know the company’s founder Damien Brickland & co-founder Andy Tomkins. Damien is a man of principle and hard work, a hands-on leader who has weathered the storm of recession with unwavering ambition. 12 years since it began, the company Eurogold now enjoys a reputation as one of the North West’s premier civil engineering contractors and has almost doubled turnover since 2013 to £26.5m. Its order book remains almost full and over the next five years the company is expected to enjoy annual growth of 9%. Eurogold’s rapid progression in the last 12 months is a mark of its approach during the recession. By operating to essentially cover overheads but, importantly, maintain its client base, staff and external workforce, Damien consolidated the company’s position to leave it ideally placed to grow during the upturn. Realising that the significant increase in contracts demanded further focus on all aspects of its operations, money was made available to invest in the business. This included £1.7m on new plant and vehicles to ensure the workforce had the best and safest tools and equipment at its disposal. The implementation of a full-time in-house Health and Safety Manager was another new addition. This was a necessity given the growing number of sites on which Eurogold was operating. In order to consistently deliver high standards for its clients and ensure the safety of its workforce, new measures were put in place to develop an already strong part of the business. Indeed, since the full-time introduction of Health and Safety Manager Michaela Connor, the bar has been set even higher. As a Worksafe Contractor and accredited to CHAS, Construction-line and the NHBC’s SafeMark scheme, Eurogold has nothing to prove when it comes to the safety of its workforce. But it’s the little things that make you stand out. That’s why the “no muddy boots” slogan has such significance. “A tidy site is a safe site,” comments Damien. “For us, the biggest thing in Health and Safety is that it begins with your perception of the business. It starts with a simple thing such as: are the vans clean? If you go in our cabins, are they tidy? That tends to tell you what’s happening on the site.” It is a strategy that comes from the top. “I go straight to the van, then I go to the site office, and finally the canteen,” adds Damien. “The state of these areas tell me everything I need to know about how well-run this site is. If the office is a mess, how well is that site being managed?” It is an approach that has brought dividend. Both Damien and Michaela enjoy a close working relationship with their site managers and the operatives on the ground. This has promoted openness amongst staff who are now more willing than ever to raise issues regarding safety, discuss their own attitudes and ideas, and highlight areas that could be improved. More than anything, safety has become an ingrained culture amongst the workforce meaning it is part of the job, not an addition to it. “Safety isn’t an option,” says Michaela. “It is the norm. What we can do, however, is take it up a level.” In fact, both Damien and Michaela are so confident in Eurogold’s health and safety procedures across its varied sites – currently 56 of them in total – they asked me to randomly pick any two for a spot visit, knowing I wouldn’t find any faults. As a groundworks and civil engineering business, Eurogold faces a number of different risks. Its varied work delivers solutions for such clients as house builders Redrow, Bellway, Wain, MCI Developments, Stewart Milne Homes, Partner Construction, Taylor Wimpey, Eccleston Homes, McCarthy & Stone, and Barratt Home; all blue chip companies that Damien is proud to be involved and associated with. Eurogold provides everything from bulk excavation, foundations and domestic drainage to hard and soft landscaping, and roads and sewer work. Risks are therefore similarly diverse from working at height to site transport, vibration, dust and manual handling. It is a challenge but one Michaela tackles head-on. In addition to daily visits by Contracts Managers and a documented weekly site inspection by the site foreman or supervisor, the Health & Safety Department will carry out regular qualitative and quantitative auditing which has been facilitated by the uninformed Health and Safety Management System implemented on every site. This has brought some key benefits such as creating a smooth transition between site teams and assisting in KPI benchmarking for compliance and standards. This is complemented by the CITB Construction Skills Card Scheme (CSCS/CPCS), which is the minimum requirement for anyone working on a Eurogold site. Further training is given such as NVQ’s, NPORS, WIAPS, SPIDER, First Aid, and NRASWA Street-Works, alongside additional on-going training based on task-specific activities include Manual Handling, Abrasive Wheel and Slinger Banksman to name a few. Furthermore, Eurogold’s onsite supervisory staff are qualified through the SMSTS or SSSTS training schemes. “I visit all our sites regularly and, alongside the Contracts Managers, we will identify any tweaks that we may need to make and deliver any training or refresher training where necessary. The training matrix is a live document so we assess on an ongoing basis,” remarks Michaela. “We care about our people,” adds Damien. “Once they’ve worked here for any length of time, they know it is the place to be. We give them the best training and high specification equipment, vehicles and facilities because if you get those things right, the standard of work and the services you provide for customers are right.” Incentivising best practice has also helped improve Health and Safety, and proven popular with the workforce.
Herts Mechanical – The Complete Engineered Solution (The Following is a Promoted Article) With twenty five years of experience as an engineering sub-contractor, Herts Mechanical has both diversified its services and widened its client base. Beginning as a conveyor installer and specialising in the integration of vertical storage machines (carousels), the company made the logical move into crane installation, and has since established itself as a leader in the installation and maintenance of integrated material handling systems and warehouse solutions. It’s over the last ten years that Herts Mechanical has expanded most confidently, becoming accomplished in a wide range of services, including: complex heavy-lifting, factory removals and the decommissioning of machinery. The ease with which the company has entered new sectors and established new services can be attributed to its solid, mechanical and electrical engineering core. As Simon Howell, Sales Director at Herts Mechanical makes clear, “Whether you’re working on a big, heavy crane or a small, high-speed press, the engineering principles remain exactly the same. Around the time of our expansion, we were taking note of just what we were capable of and realised that, actually, we could do a lot more than we were doing.” Whilst Herts Mechanical has enlarged the variety of sub-contracted services it offers, the company has retained the bespoke service promised within its original portfolio of works. It’s with versatility and a willingness to exceed clients’ expectations that the company continues to attract some of the most high profile and discerning of clients. “We make the effort to understand exactly what each client is looking for, and that’s key to establishing a successful working relationship,” says Howell. “After identifying those individual requirements, we actively support them in realising their ambitions. “While conducting risk assessments and methods has always been fundamental to our business, it’s by working so closely with clients, that we’ve been able to incorporate various aspects of best practice we’ve seen. For example, we now carry out risk assessments on an ongoing basis, rather than simply prior to the commencement of a contract. We’ve found that it reflects the volatile environment of construction sites and is able to ensure the safety of staff in a more pronounced way.” Partnership is therefore of mutual benefit, wherein Herts Mechanical continues to hold clients up as a benchmark, and customers are awarded an adapted and adaptive service which continues to be exactly what they need. Placing health and safety at the top of the agenda, Herts Mechanical observes a stringent code of practice across contracts, as evidenced by the company’s Safecontractor accreditation. Also a member of the Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA), it’s the health and safety competency assessment that has been most pivotal to Herts Mechanical’s success and which has seen it recurrently secure contracts with major, blue chip organisations. Confronting the rapidly changing face of the industry head on, Herts Mechanical is determinedly progressive and continues to evolve in line with both technological advances and more urgent concerns for the environment. “There’s a great saying,” Howell goes on, “That if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got. Unless that market’s changed, that is, in which case what you’re chasing doesn’t exist anymore. We’ll therefore continue to embrace change – in respect of our clients, their needs and environmental pressure – in order to assure our presence in the here and now.”
Conder Allslade – Building Quality with Steel (The Following is a Promoted Article) Steel continues to be the choice material in the construction industry, favoured for its sustainability, durability, versatility and affordability. Operating by those very same tokens, Conder Allslade has secured a resolute identity in the structural steel sector, and is continually favoured by clients for its high quality, comprising service. Following its establishment in 2008, Conder Allslade has solidified its reputation in the steel construction industry, fast-becoming a leader in the provision of high quality structural steel and now equipped to carry out both design-and-build and consultant-designed projects. With its network of regular partners and sub-contractors, the company realises itself much like a one-stop-shop in structural steelwork and continues to add further capabilities under its structural steel header. It’s with such a comprehensive service that the company finds itself working within multiple sectors, including: warehouse and industrial distribution, manufacturing, commercial, offices, town centres, car parks, cinemas, retail facilities, leisure centres, education and health. Inundated with a variety of projects though Conder Allslade may be, its focus on quality has yet to wane and the company prides itself on its ability to work exactly to individual clients’ needs. “We like to think we work with our clients rather than simply for them,” Mike Hunter, Managing Director of Conder Allslade insists. “We work across a variety of projects and, within that, undertake new builds, extensions and refurbishments. Whether we’re approached at a design, manufacture or erection stage, we strive offer superior, integrated customer service and support at all times so as to offer something which is tailored exactly to a customer’s brief.” Whilst each of the projects on which the company works necessitate a different approach and bear distinct challenges, Conder Allslade’s distinct hallmark of quality is consistent throughout. Having invested in a state-of-the-art processing facility, the company is now able to carry out shot-blasting, sawing, drilling and robotic profiling – each to CE Mark EX3. Now with over 15,000 square metres of production facilities, the company is well-equipped offer its customers maximum quality and flexibility in the manufacture of high quality structural steelwork and complex components. Cutting edge technology aside, the quality and accuracy of its steel is largely attributable to Conder Allslade’s highly-qualified manufacturing team who, followed up by dedicated inspections, enact various quality control measures before, during and after production. In view of the crucial role its staff play when securing contracts and carving out a unique identity in the sector, Conder Allslade has devoted real time and attention to its operatives, sourcing the best in the sector as well as providing opportunities for training and development so as to safeguard the quality of work carried out. “We tend to employ full tradespeople,” details Hunter, “And find that they come with a certain assurance in quality because of the breadth of experience they have in complex manufacture and precision engineering, rather than being purely single discipline specialists. We make sure everyone has that adaptability; our operatives are trained to both plate and weld so they do the whole job on the bar, they put the whole assembly together.” Emphasis on existing staff aside, there is the added pressure of securing a future workforce for which training and development simply will not do. It’s been widely reported that there is declining interest amongst younger generations in manufacturing and engineering industry and fewer and fewer people are going on to pursue a career in the sector. It’s resulted in a lack of specialist tradespeople and concern for the national face of the industry. With expressed determination to secure the future of the sector and its own esteem within that, the company has acknowledged those skills shortages threatening the sector and actively sought to address the deficits in technical expertise by engaging with local apprenticeship schemes. Hunter details further: “We engage with local colleges and have supported two apprentices through to NVQ Level 3 in the last five years. More than just a box-ticking exercise, apprentices are trained in other areas of the business; in particular, aspects related to shop-floor operation. With the additional opportunity to work with our Maintenance Engineer, they become multi-skilled engineers capable of getting the best out of the kit, and doing so in the safest possible way.” The two apprentices have since qualified as platers, and are employed full-time by the company. At each level of employment, staff benefit from the ability to train and work in multiple areas and thus gain insight and experience within a number of discrete but inter-related disciplines. Indeed, the company’s versatility can be attributed to the cross-pollination of practices and processes that occurs during its keen training and development schemes. A recent project for the Farnborough International Airshow (FIA) made use of Conder Allslade’s flexible and all-encompassing structural steel service. It saw the company provide the entire superstructure, from the steelwork to the floor, and from the cladding to each window and door. Whilst the company has gone on to establish itself in a number of different aspects of steel manufacture and construction, Conder Allslade’s unique, end-to-end service is only made possible through the partnerships it sustains with sub-contractors and suppliers. After design and fabrication, the company utilises the services of fellow steel specialists for management and erection, and its role becomes that of ensuring all interfaces between trades are covered. Collaboration between itself and subcontractors inevitably throws up challenges to health and safety, as well as threatening lapses in either schedule or quality. With an ingrained health and safety culture, Conder Allslade refuses to tolerate anyone flouting the rules and retains a strict code of conduct by which partners must abide. Subcontractors must complete a health and safety questionnaire as part of the approval process in which they must detail their safety performance, competence, training, insurance and other issues. Risk to health and safety is taken incredibly seriously, as Hunter continues: “All our supervisors have gone through either the Site Supervisor Safety Training Scheme (SSSTS) or the
