…DOWNSCALING IN GLASGOW?
Things are tough north of the border, but not as tough as these 15 Mansell employees. They abseiled 240ft down a Glasgow city centre refurbishment on Sauchiehall Street to help raise vital funds for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres, which provide information and support for people and families living with cancer.
Mansell is in the process of completing an £18.5m contract to convert and re-clad the existing 18-storey building into a 220-bed Premier Inn hotel and to refurbish the two-storey podium at ground level while occupied.
We don’t have any details of how long it took them to get down the building, but one hopes the employees made best use of their time by stopping off on the way to complete any snagging.
In all, the bravehearts raised £10,000 for Maggie’s – no mean feat.
www.constructingcommunities.com
…SPOTTING THE ODD ONE OUT?
Well done to folk at the Considerate Contractors Scheme.
The organisation was invited to Ware, Hertfordshire, last month, led by chief executive Edward Hardy, to collect an Investors in People standard award.
The award recognises that the Considerate Constructors scheme is committed to its staff, as well as to raising its business performance.
The organisation has done a lot towards raising standards of working and safety on site over the years, but will be the first to admit there’s still a lot to do. According to Hardy, it is working towards achieving a bronze award in three years’ time.
Glad to see the team took their lucky mascot, Ivor Goodsite, along to the presentation event. If you have a magnifying glass to hand you’ll spot
him lurking in the background, looking like a cross between Bob the Builder and American Dad.
… DEPILATING YOUR ROOF?
Maidenhead company TVSP thinks you should.
It claims that while people are concerned with the walls of their homes, they are more than likely to let their roofs run wild. Apparently bacteria such as A. niger, algae, moss and lichen are putting your roof tiles under constant attack. If TVSP is to be believed, it’s like an episode of Lost up there. Thank heavens, then, for the firm’s patented Mossgo product, an anti-algal biocide that will deal with all those little critters in one go. One jet of this baby and nature will be peeling off your pan tiles within days.
…A BURNS NIGHT WITHOUT ANY BURNS?
Well, it is if you’re Arch Timber Protection. Its Dricon fire retardant timber treatment has just been used to protect the Charles Inglis Clark Memorial Hut, a climber’s facility on Ben Nevis, which makes the hut technically the most fire-retardant structure in the UK.
The structure, built in the late 1920s, is owned by the Scottish Mountaineering Club and is 685m above sea level – you’d have to build one Shard on top of the other before you could tap at its wee timber door.
Two years ago, the hut subcommittee decided to refurbish the lot, and had to deliver new redwood timber pre-treated with the Dricon fire protection by helicopter – overcoming the external environment to line the internal, so to speak. As Burns himself once said: ‘Gi’e me a spark o’nature’s fire!’. Well, Mr Burns, it looks like you can have as many as you like…
