Capita Symonds at BSEC 2010 - Post 1

A brisk start to BSEC at its new home for 2010 at ExCel.

Putting aside the usual delegate complaints about travel problems getting to the Docklands venue, the first few hours have been well attended and emphasised BSEC's place as the conference/exhibition for school design, as it has been for the last few years.

Has the event lost anything in its move from Manchester Central (its 'bulging-at-the-seams' home in previous years)? The jury's still out on that one - its certainly larger but maybe that's not everything.

Highlights today include Capita Symonds' Richard Woods speaking at a live online debate today 2.30pm - Join the debate

We've put some photos on Flickr - have a look!

More photos and commentary to come over the two days.

Jonathan Goring Cycles to Cannes

Dear All

I am taking part in the Cycle to Cannes charity challenge which is an annual 6-day 1500km cycling endurance event. It is probably the closest an amateur cyclist will get to feeling like a "pro" having full support, rolling road closures and covering up to 300km a day….

My chosen charity is Over the Wall, a small but incredibly deep reaching charity which provides respite care for sick kids and their families. OTW allows sick kids or their brothers and sisters to take a well earned break from the routine of hospitals and home visits which often rules their lives; it provides a wild time for kids to be kids in one of OTW's summer camps. Last year 600 kids and families benefited and OTW's plan is to increase this year on year and make a lasting impact on the lives of the 17,000 children with serious illness in the UK.

Find out more about Over the Wall on their website

Visit my charity web page to make a donation

Find out more about Cycle2Cannes

My aim is to raise at least £3,000 so your support would be greatly appreciated.

With best wishes.

Jonathan
____________________________________

We'll hopefully be keeping you up to date with Jonathan's progress via our blog. Watch this space.

Wear Red for RedR

The Cwmbran office raised £185 at this year’s Wear Red for RedR Day.

The original concept of RedR was to create a register of carefully selected and trained engineers who could be called on at short notice to work with front-line relief agencies, either on secondment from their regular employer or as a full time aid relief worker.

The charity, which started in the UK, has evolved into an international federation of RedRs that provide a host of specialist training and recruitment services for all the major aid agencies.

For further information about Capita Symonds' involvement with RedR contact David Price

Into the Wilde

On 14th January 2010 Capita Symonds’ Tom Wilde and Mark Morland will be heading off on an 11 day trip which will see them climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support.

Standing at 5,896m above sea level, Mount Kilimanjaro is the world's highest free standing mountain. The breathable oxygen at the top is less than half the amount than is common at sea level and climbers cover at least 80 kilometres unsupported on their journey to the summit and back.

The pair will be joined by nearly 40 colleagues from Capita Group. Each team member has been asked to raise £5,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support which will hopefully create a massive combined total of £200,000!

A number of fundraising events have been taking place, including collections, raffles, bingo nights and bungy jumps. Tom and Mark have also been training in the Lake District (pictured).

Anybody who wishes to support Tom and Mark in raising money for this great cause can do so via their justgiving sites:

www.justgiving.com/tomwilde

www.justgiving.com/Mark-Morland

Cwmbran Road Safety Music Challenge

Our Cwmbran office organised the final of a local Road Safety Music Challenge recently.

Five local comprehensive schools took part, performing compositions on an Anti Drink-Drive theme.

The winners, which were decided by a panel of three judges - Polly James from Nation Radio, Steve Baker from ROSPA and St John Diston from Gwent Music – were:

First: Lewis School Pengam (£250)
Second: Abertillery Comprehensive (£150)
Third: Nantyglo Comprehensive (£100)

The prizes were presented by Chief Superintendent Kevin Price of Heddlu Gwent Police who said, “The high standard and amount of effort put in by these young people is very impressive. They are promoting an important message. For many years we have tried a range of strategies to get the anti drink drive message over. Music is a powerful medium and these musicians are in a position to influence their peer group, families and the wider community. They are our future and I seek their support in getting over this important message.”

Cllr John Evans, Mayor of Caerphilly CBC said: “The standards shown by the students this evening have been absolutely superb. I am glad that I’m not one of the judges as choosing the winner will be very difficult!”

Helen Davidson, project manager of Music Challenge for Capita Symonds said, “Engaging with this age group can be difficult but music has helped the barriers come down. The depth of understanding within the lyrics is very impressive, I am sure none of the performers and their friends will ever drink and drive now.”

The winning band will have the opportunity to record their song at a commercial recording studio. It will also be used as the basis of an advertisement on Nation Radio to promote the All Wales Anti Drink- Drive Campaign.

Winners Lewis Boys School with Cllr John Evans

Capita Symonds celebrates Ramadan

Capita Symonds and Capita sponsored Blackburn's first ever Chand Raat Festival, held to celebrate the end of Ramadan.

Hundreds of people flocked to Blackburn Market and then to Town Hall Square for the special Eid Festival, which was held the day before Eid-ul-Fitr – the annual celebration ending the Islamic month of fasting.

The finest in Asian produce was on offer with stalls selling a wide range of items from clothes, embroidered material, jewellery, scents, hijabs and purses to foods, accessories, Islamic art, shawls and scarves.

Zunny Dar from Capita Group offered henna painting at her stall (sponsored by Capita). Children from local primary schools were invited to take part in an eid card competition with prizes donated by Capita.

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.

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

Success for Capita Symonds at the 2009 Microsoft Challenge.

2 teams from Capita Symonds took part in this years Microsoft Challenge. The challenge is one of the UK’s most gruelling corporate events and this year was held in the Cambrian mountains near Aberystwyth, Wales.

Our teams, lead by Tom Davies and John Kinnear from the East Grinstead office, finished 21st and 27th out of 93 teams. The teams were drawn from across the business with individuals from Procter Street, Fetter Lane, Carlisle, Sefton, Blackburn, Cheadle Hulme and Manchester.

The challenge involved 8 stages spread over 4 days and nights including mountain biking, pentango (a strategic board game), running, canoeing and constructing a device to retrieve an egg from behind a barrier 8 ft away! All of the stages were extremely complex and required a great deal of planning and strategic thinking in addition to the physical element in order to score well.

As part of the challenge teams had to raise money for the NSPCC and between our teams we managed to raise a total of over £3,400 for the charity through a combination of personal sponsorship, selling raffle tickets and matched funding from Capita Group. The grand total for the event was more than £435,000 for the NSPCC, resulting in an emotional speech of thanks from Sir Christopher Kelly (chairman of the NSPCC) at the prize giving ceremony.

Our MD (and team member) Jonathan Goring commented on the event that:
“The bond of teamwork was immense and the way everyone supported others before themselves drove us all to find new reserves. Thanks to all of the team members for making us all proud ”

The teams would like to thank all their colleagues, family and friends for their generous encouragement and support in helping them work towards their fundraising target for NSPCC.

We are planning to enter more adventure races and other outdoor events throughout the year and all Capita Symonds staff are welcome to join the fun. Our ambition is to send both a mens and a mixed team to next year’s Microsoft Challenge event in Aviemore, Scotland.

A BIG THANKS to everyone who took part and everyone who donated!

You can still make a donation - go to www.justgiving.com/teamcapitasymonds

Have a look at the photos:

Photos from the Microsoft Challenge

View more OpenOffice presentations from CapitaSymonds.

Capita Symonds works on Take That's stage set

We've worked on some really interesting and varied projects recently.

And they don't get much more exciting than helping to create the stage set for a massive arena tour! We provided structural engineering advice on the stage sets for the Take That's current 'Circus' tour which opened in Sunderland.

Director Malcolm Richards worked closely with set builders Brilliant Stages and artistic designer Mark Fisher.

The action-packed show features jugglers, clowns, trapeze artists, tightrope walkers and drummerboys and a huge red big top tent. The pièce de résistance is a huge silver elephant which carries the boys (or should we call them men now?!) across the stage.

The tour continues with dates in Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester and London. See Take That's website for more details.

The team also provided structural engineering advice for AC/DC's 'Black Ice' tour, which has dates in London, Glasgow and Dublin this month.

Find out more:

A full article, including an interview with Malcolm Richards can be found in this week's Building Magazine (issue 23 - 12.06.09)

Links:

• Read more on Building's website (the article mentioned above, minus the interview with Malcolm Richards)
• Look at pictures from the tour on Flickr
• Watch clips of the stage show on YouTube
• Go to Take That's official website
• Got to the Careers in Engineering supplement of The Telegraph - featuring Malcolm Richards, and the AC/DC tour
• See the AC/DC tour dates

Have a look at the elephant in action:

Wimbledon rain raises a cheer

The Wimbledon roof had it's first official outing this weekend, at a special event put on to 'open' (and close) the court's latest addition.

Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, Tim Henman and Kim Clijsters played whilst, as if on cue, the skys opened, and the roof closed!

All four players expressed delight at the new roof, and the crowd certainly agreed.

Read more about the event, and see pictures on the Sky News website

Capita Symonds provided structural engineering consultancy on the project.

Free Tree Seminar

The Trees and Design Action Group - of which Capita Lovejoy is a founding member - has organised a free seminar to discuss the issues surrounding trees and planning.

The event takes place at Barcham Trees near Ely in Cambridgeshire, the largest container tree nursery in Europe:

Date: 20th May 2009
Venue: Barcham Trees Plc, Eye Hill Drove, Cambridgeshire, CB7 5XF
Bookings: Jules Baird, Barcham Trees, T: 01353-720748 E: jules@barchamtrees.co.uk

Capita Symonds advises on Boardmasters Festival

Capita Symonds will be providing Event Safety consultation for the Relentless Boardmasters Festival - a surf, skate and music festival in Newquay, Cornwall - 5th - 9th August.

Read the full article on our website

Photo courtesy of Relentless

Eggcellent Easter Collection

Staff at Capita Symonds’ Cumbria and North East offices pulled off an amazing Easter feat by collecting 455 Easter Eggs for charity.

The Carlisle, Durham, Penrith, Kendal, Barrow and Whitehaven / Lillyhall offices held a dress down day to raise money for the children’s wards at five local hospitals. As part of the day, staff were also asked to bring in an Easter egg of their choice to donate to the various wards (Cumberland Infirmary - Carlisle & Penrith offices; West Cumberland Hospital – Whitehaven, Maryport & Lillyhall offices; Furness Hospital – Barrow offices; Lancaster Royal Infirmary – Kendal offices; Durham University Hospital – Durham offices).

The scores were:
Carlisle – 263
Durham – 20
Penrith – 32
Kendal – 72
Barrow – 26
Whitehaven/ Lillyhall – 42

As the Carlisle office gathered 263 eggs (a few too many for one children’s ward!), they donated 40 to adults with learning disabilities at the Glenmore Trust (Carlisle) for their Easter egg hunt. The remainder will be donated to Cumbria County Council Social services to give to individual families.

Capita Symonds Cumbria and North East also donated £500 which will be split between the five children’s wards.

Thanks to all of our generous staff!

Cwmbran dress to impress for Comic Relief

A special Red Nose mention goes to the Cwmbran office who raised over £600 for Comic Relief.

The office obviously went to a great deal of effort with their costumes - notably Marge Simpson, the peacocks, a samba dancer, and a Darlek!!

The team also produced a special Comic Relief DVD - Cwmbran 9 to 5 – to mark the occasion with Antony Hyde, a member of the office’s Social Committee, working extremely hard during his lunch hours and after work in order to produce the masterpiece - you can see some stills from the DVD in the pictures below.

A copy of the DVD can be purchased for just £2 from antony.hyde@capita.co.uk

The office’s Social Committee also devised a whole week of delicious and fun events including cake baking and what is probably the most impressive fancy dress display we have ever seen.

Well done to the whole office!

Cwmbran Red Nose Day

View more presentations from CapitaSymonds.

Ecobuild update

Yet another busy day at Ecobuild yesterday, with people queuing to get into Rob Firth's sustainable schools seminar!

Still time to get down there today - get more details on the Ecobuild website

Follow what's happening:

• Follow Kate Nelson's Ecobuild updates on Twitter (Kate is Capita Symonds' Principle Sustainability consultant - kate.nelson@capita.co.uk)
• See what people are saying about Ecobuild on Twitter
• See pictures from Ecobuild
• Ecobuild updates on Building's website

Sustainable solutions brochure

For all those at Ecobuild or interested in sustainability, we've produced a new Capita Symonds Sustainable solutions brochure.

Find out more about our experience and expertise - view our Sustainable solutions brochure

Update from Ecobuild

It was a great day at Ecobuild yesterday - with the Capita Symonds' theatre packed for every session.

Don't forget to catch Rob Firth, Head of Architecture, today talking about "Building Zero Carbon Schools" today at 12:00.

• Follow Kate Nelson's Ecobuild updates on Twitter (Kate is Capita Symonds' Principle Sustainability consultant - kate.nelson@capita.co.uk)
• See what people are saying about Ecobuild on Twitter
• Watch Boris Johnson talk about his green vision for London
• Watch Alastair Campbell at Ecobuild
  

Here are a few photos from yesterday:

Capita Symonds at Ecobuild

Don't forget Capita Symonds are at Ecobuild until Thursday 5th March, Earls Court, London.

We're sponsoring the Road to Zero Carbon theatre and speakers from Capita Symonds include:

• Liane Hartley: Turning Red into Green - 11:45-12:45 Tuesday 3rd March
• Capita Architecture’s Rob Firth: Sustainable Schools – Making it happen 10:30-12:30

Links:

• See what people are saying about Ecobuild on twitter
• Go to the Ecobuild website
• Go to the Ecobuild section of Building's website

Southampton FE Rugby Festival

More than 250 Hampshire students gathered for the inaugural Capita Symonds Further Education Rugby Festival at Trojans RFC in Eastleigh recently.

Organised by the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and the Capita Symonds Southampton office, the tournament saw Brockenhurst College win the men’s prize while the Peter Symonds College from Winchester won the ladies’ trophy.

Both teams were presented with trophies and vouchers for a new set of team shirts by Craig Manton, Operations Director of Capita Symonds in Southampton. Craig said: “We were very impressed with the standard of rugby and the level of support from local colleges. We look forward to supporting the event in the future.”

Louise Hall, Director of Sport for Brockenhurst College added: “It was a superb tournament, very well organised. We had a great day and look forward to defending the trophy next year. Everyone would like to say a huge thank you to the RFU and Capita Symonds for organising the event.”

Jamie Sanders, Rugby Development Officer for Hampshire, commented: “It was great to see such a high quality of rugby from the higher education colleges and it’s fantastic that Capita Symonds allowed us the opportunity to run such a popular competition for the colleges in Hampshire. We look forward to expanding it next year.”

The ladies event attracted teams from across Hampshire and Sharon Evans, Community Rugby Coach for Women and Girls thanked all involved for their assistance: “It’s fantastic for the girls to have an opportunity to play in a festival and to put our skills into practice. We are grateful to Capita Symonds for sponsoring the event and look forward to being here next year.”

Capita Symonds would also like to thank Hampshire Referees Society, Trojans FC and Solent University for their help and expertise in organising the day.

The final results were:

• Men’s Cup Winners – Brockenhurst College, Brockenhurst (RFU accredited college)Men’s Cup Runners Up – Oaklands Catholic College, Portsmouth
• Ladies Cup Winners – Peter Symonds College, Winchester
• Plate Winners – Peter Symonds College, Winchester
• Plate Runners Up – Tauntons College, Southampton