Starchitects

Congratulations to Nicola James, Richard Woods, Lee Griffiths, Kevin Jones, Matthew Richards and Adrian Jones from Capita Architecture’s Cardiff studio who came sixth in the team competition at this year’s Cardiff 10K.

The team donated £250 to Kidney Wales in the process via Katherine Jenkins' appeal: http://www.justgiving.com/katherinejenkins

Southampton staff help with Holy Family school improvements

Staff from Capita Symonds’ Southampton office and Southampton City Council gave up a precious Saturday recently to improve the indoor environment for children at Holy Family School in Millbrook, Southampton.

The project – part of the Business in the Community (BITC) Programme – saw the team tackling a variety of different challenges including redecorating a number of classrooms.

Tony Head, Deputy Headmaster said: “We are enormously grateful for the effort of all those involved. Collaboration such as this between business and schools allows us all to ensure that our children are given the very best learning environment that we can. It’s fantastic to work with other organisations that are as committed to making a difference as we are.”

Pat Smith, BITC Hampshire Area Manager said: “We are absolutely delighted to be working with Capita Symonds and Holy Family. Employee volunteering is one of the most important and effective ways that companies can increase their positive impact in the community and leverage a key resource beyond cash.”

Although it resides in one of the most deprived areas of Southampton, the Holy Family Primary School has risen from 30th to 5th in the school league tables in just three years.

Well done and many thanks to everybody involved.

New website

We've launched our new website!

Have a look at www.capitasymonds.co.uk

It's got lots of nice new features, and all new content - we hope you like it.

We'd love to know what you think - so if you have any comments, email us at website.capitasymonds@capita.co.uk

Capita Challenge Video

While we're on the subject of Challenges today, we thought you might be interested to see a little video about the Capita Challenge.

The Capita Challenge is an outdoor activity race bringing together teams of Capita colleagues from across the Group's 250 UK offices and 27,000 staff to compete for the Capita Trophy - raising lots of money for charity in the process.

This year's event took place in Stratford upon Avon, and hence had a Shakespeare theme!

You can also access the video on the YouTube site

Capita Symonds to Compete in Intelligent Sport World Series Final

Capita Symonds will be the sole representative for the UK construction industry at the Intelligent Sport World Series Final in Portugal.

The Intelligent Sport World Series comprises 12 annual corporate challenge events on six continents – including the Microsoft Challenge. These events culminate in the World Series Final in December where the top teams from each event will go head-to-head in the ultimate showcase of team performance. The event will take place in Geopark Naturtejo da Meseta Meridional in central Portugal.

Two teams from Capita Symonds recently took place in the Microsoft Challenge in the Cambrian Mountains in Mid Wales. They did well achieving 21st and 27th place, but narrowly missed out on a place in the final. Of course they were disappointed, but a sigh of relief went out across the team at the thought of no more training.

However their luck changed (for the better or worse?) when they received a phone call explaining that there was now a place available and would they like to take part!

So now we’re back in the game!

We’ve decided to create a Capita Symonds ‘super-team’, by picking the five strongest members of both Capita Symonds’ original teams. The squad will be training hard in the run up to the event and will be entering a number of adventure races and other physical events, to up their fitness and build on the lessons learnt in Wales.

Only 30 teams from across the world have been invited, and made up from the qualifiers from the USA, South Africa, Europe and the Far East. We will be competing against organisations such as Airbus and the US Air Force.

Good luck!

Find out more about the Intelligent Sport World Series at http://is.challengerworldresults.com/

Pryke on his bike

Andrew Pryke, Capita Architecture’s Design Director, and Capita Symonds’ Andrew Wheldon completed the King Sturge Property Triathlon at Dorney Lake, Eaton, recently.

The Property Triathlon is now in its third year and has already firmly established itself as one of the top five UK triathlons by size. Co-sponsored by Property Week, the event to date has raised over £500,000 for charity and has seen more than 3,500 people take part.

This year’s event included a 750m open water swim, 12 mile bike ride and three mile run. Andrew chalked up a time of 1 hr 15min 3 sec, putting him in eight place out of over 100 in the 45-49 year old category, 16th out of approximately 220 in the 40-49 category, and 97th out of 1155 overall.

Andrew Wheldon notched up a highly respectable time of 1 hour 30 min 15 sec.

Well done to both Andrews!

Blogs, Twitter, social networking: your new business tools

The construction industry is proving that social media and digital marketing is not just for consumer brands - with a wide variety of businesses now turning to digital channels to promote their business and communicate with potential clients.

Construction Manager magazine has pulled together some thoughts and tips from industry professionals including how to use Twitter, LinkedIn and Blogs.

• Read the full article on the Construction Manager website

......and we're mentioned in there too! ;-)

Carlisle Staff Give a Helping Hand

A team of volunteers from our Carlisle office recently renovated a local garden for a charity in Harker. Ten members of Capita Symonds staff took part in the project over two half days at Heathlands Farm, part of the Glenmore Trust.

The site is run by Glenmore Opportunities, a Social Enterprise that provides support and development for adults with disabilities.The users at the centre outlined what they wanted in the garden, which was designed by landscape architect David Richards, including plants to attract butterflies, something to deter rabbits, and a gnome.

After weeding, the volunteers completed the garden with a tidy up of the overgrown site, and adding new plants. Plans for the future of the Glenmore site include a tea room, farm shop and nature trails.

David Richards said: “All of the volunteers are really happy with how the garden has turned out. We put in a lot of hard work and we are delighted that the day centre users at Glenmore have a nice front garden they can enjoy throughout the year.”

The garden renovation is part of the Carlisle office’s ongoing Community Engagement plan which it is hoped will take on larger projects in the future.

Before

The volunteers

The finished article

Thank you to all the volunteers!

Capita Bobrowski engineers Goodwood Festival of Speed sculpture for 5th time.

Capita Bobrowski (our structural engineering brand) provided structural engineering design services for the spectacular central sculpture at last weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed.

This year's innovative display was sponsored by Audi in its centenary year, and was designed especially for the event by renowned sculptor Gerry Judah. Celebrating Audi’s achievements in motorsports, the sculpture features the legendary 1937 Auto Union Streamliner and the recently launched R8 V10 sports car at either end of a dramatic 'swoosh' of tyre tracks, as if they are driving off into the sky.

Although the 44 tonne, 32metre high structure is entirely fabricated from steel, Capita Bobrowski utilised in-house software that was originally written for tensile fabric to provide the complex cutting patterns needed for the steel plates that are welded to the central core tube.

Have a look at pictures of the sculpture on Flickr

Capita Bobrowski were also involved in the last 4 sculptures at the event:

• 2008 - Land Rover
• 2007 - Toyota
• 2006 - Renault
• 2005 - Honda

Urban Vision Staff lend a helping hand to St Anne's Hospice

Eight members of our Urban Vision team in Salford took part in a gardening project at St Ann’s Hospice recently.

The hospice – Urban Vision’s chosen charity for 2009 – is the largest hospice in Greater Manchester and provides specialist care for people who have progressive and life-threatening illnesses – as well as support for their carers and families.

With summer approaching, the aim of the day was to dramatically improve the gardens and outdoor break areas for the patients and their families. A couple of hours of mowing, digging and planting transformed the hospice’s surroundings, much to the delight of Andy, the hospice’s caretaker!

The volunteers insisted that they’ll be back again next year with their gardening gloves and spades in tow.

Back row: Paul Clayden, Cathy Mitchell, Toni Bullen, Stephen Lawton.
Front row: Amanda Cordina, Hayley Watson.

Links:

• Go to the St Anne's Hospice Website
• Find out more about Urban Vision
• Go to the Urban Vision website