School Gives Civil Engineers a Good Report
27th October 2009
Teachers and support staff at a Stockton-on-Tees special school are enjoying all the benefits of a new, enlarged staff room earlier than expected after local contractor Henderson Campbell completed the project ahead of schedule.
The Guisborough based civil engineers diversified from their traditional Home Office prison work to give staff at Abbey Hill School and Technology College a better environment in which to take a break from the classroom.
And the school’s Business Manager, Edwin Thorman, said they did a great job!
“I have managed a lot of projects for the school in the last ten years and I can honestly say that this was one of the best,” he commented. “What’s more, it is the first one to have been completed on time!”
Abbey Hill is designated as a High Performing Specialist School for children aged 11 to 19 years with a very wide range of learning difficulties.
Located close to North Tees hospital, it was built in 1991 and attended then by fewer than 130 pupils. That has increased to almost 300. The number of staff has increased accordingly but, while new buildings were constructed to meet the needs of the additional students, staff accommodation remained the same.
Now, they not only have a much larger rest area – which, for the first time, they can all comfortably fit into for staff meetings – and new kitchen facilities, they also have three new side rooms in which they can meet privately with students or parents.
Said Edwin: “Although our primary focus is the education and care of children, the staff matter too. It was our concern for their welfare that led to this latest building project and it has given them a real boost.”
The job was also a boost for Henderson Campbell. It was the first time in five years that they had tendered for a project in the education sector.
MD Antony Henderson said he had been delighted to be awarded the contract in the first place, especially as it was on Teesside. To then go on to receive such a good report from the client was the icing on the cake.
“ It has made us much more confident about diversifying,” he explained.
“We have been fortunate in recent years to have been a preferred contractor for the Home Office but we are well aware of the problems of being reliant on one employer and want to prove that our experience and skills from prison work are equally appropriate for other sectors. I think that is evident from the Abbey Hill project and hope it will lead to other local authority work.”