Marathon Man

Adrian Jones from Capita Architecture’s Cardiff studio beat over 50 runners to win the Brentwood Multilap Marathon recently in a remarkable time of 2.55.16

Not only that, he also won a similar race in the Gower, South Wales.

Both races were off-road and much slower than straight road marathons, involving in varied grade and terrain – from slippery mud slopes to sandy dunes to steps and rocky cliff paths (not to mention jumping over stiles).

View Adrian's report on the Gower race

Well done Adrian!

Some festive fun - Shootin Sprouts

Capita Symonds presents...................

Shootin' Sprouts! Our fun festive sprout-flinging game.

It's the office Christmas party and you've been served sprouts! Eugh!

Get rid of those evil greens as quickly as possible - using your colleagues as target-practice.

Challenge your friends and try and get to the top of our leader board

Go shoot some sprouts!

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.

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/

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.

Health and Safety Don'ts

We all know Health and Safety is something to be taken very seriously in the workplace and on-site. So check out these photos on how NOT to do it:

Go to Construction Space's Rogues Gallery

Please don't attempt any of these!

PS - we can offer excellent Health and Safety training as well as Leisure and Event safety Consultancy. (And you are ever unfortunately enough to suffer an accident, we offer a Health and Safety Expert Witness service.)

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.

Christmas Countdown

Feeling festive?

To get you into the spirit we've launched the Capita Symonds Christmas Countdown Calendar(that's a mouthfull!). Each day we'll have a handy hint or some festive fun all the way up to the big day itself - so visit daily!

http://www.xmas-countdown.com/