Capita Symonds shortlisted for CMA 08 Award

We have been shortlisted for the Construction Marketing Awards 08 for "Best Use of Events & Exhibitions", for our stand at the 'Think 08' sustainability exhibition.

The full shortlist for all awards will be announced on 20th October on the CMA 08 website

The winners will be announced on 27th November 2008. Fingers crossed!

Find out more about our Capita Symonds at Think 08

Find out more about Sustainability within Capita Symonds

Watch our video from Think 08:

Liane Sheppard Nominated for Welsh Woman of the Year Award

Liane – Director of the new Capita Glamorgan Consultancy – has been nominated for the prestigious Welsh Woman of the Year awards.

Liane is one of three finalists in the ‘Woman in Construction & The Built Environment’ category – one of ten categories in total.

The winners of each category will be announced - along with the overall winner (the Welsh Woman of the Year) – at a gala ceremony on Friday 21st November at Cardiff International Arena.

Liane has 15 years experience in civil engineering - from graduate up to Chartered Engineer status – and has worked on a wide variety of schemes from traffic calming to major infrastructure projects.

Mark Rees-Williams, Director of the Capita Gwent Consultancy (Cwmbran) office, said: “Liane’s energy, enthusiasm and positive approach to business is obvious to all who meet her and her achievements to date are a great motivation to the many women in our company.”

Capita Glamorgan Consultancy is a ground breaking joint ventures with Capita Symonds and Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Councils. The JV is worth £75m and will deliver major highways, transportation, engineering, construction, environmental and related projects across the local authorities and the rest of South Wales.

We could be heros......

Our East Grinstead office recently held “Heroes Day” which saw staff dressing as their favourite superhero to raise money for numerous worthy causes - part of Capita’s “Charity Week” festivities.

The prize for best fancy dress had to go to Matt Quilty for his brilliant outfit - there’s nothing more bizarre than seeing Superman stood at the photocopier. Highly honorable mentions also have to go to Mark Hirst’s Milk Tray Man and Jackie Fraser’s Supergirl outfits.

Mark, Jackie and Matt

For some extra fun a group of ‘willing’ volunteers from the senior staff took the stocks for a wet sponge attack - with everyone paying £1 for four sponges to soak their victims.

Huge thanks go to Dave Baird, Tony Blake, Simon Reeves, Mark Hirst and special guest Jonathan Goring (our MD) who were all good sports and took their turn in the stocks.

The East Grinstead team managed to raise £355 which now brings them very close to their £10,000 fundraising target for the year.

A big thanks to everyone who took part and donated money.

First BSF schools open in Lancashire

The first major wave of schools designed and built by the government’s BSF (Building Schools for the Future) programme have opened now in Lancashire.

Seven new ground-breaking schools – catering for over 2000 students - have opened over three sites - Burnley (Burnley Campus), Nelson (Pendle Vale) and Padiham (Shuttleworth College).

Capita Symonds is providing educational, partnering, architectural and engineering services on a number of the projects which have been specifically designed to transform the way that learning takes place – a core objective of the BSF initiative – as well as reflecting the needs of the wider community.

The Capita Symonds multi-disciplinary team has been led by Project Director, Simon Jones; Design Director, Richard Dinsdale; Lead Consultant Lucy Dean and Alan Ayre; Director of Educational Projects James Cowlishaw; and with educational support from Jane Longfield.

The £29m Pendle Vale College and Pendle Vale High School site in Nelson (below) brings together two schools under one roof with the aim of achieving greater integration between the two. The sloping site has been used to create a new local landmark with a building that rises in tiers to four storeys and is capped by a sweeping roofline. Sports pitches and indoor sports resources are all built to Sports England standards to support the school’s aims to achieve specialist sports college status.

Burnley Campus (below) is the biggest of three sites and contains schools for both sixth form and primary students, costing £31 million to build and equip . It boasts a 50-place nursery and children’s centre; a library and faith centre; all-weather sports pitches; fitness centre; climbing wall; sports hall; and hydrotherapy pool.

Finally, the £20m Shuttleworth College in Padiham (below) features an entrance area dominated by a dramatic floor-to-ceiling atrium that echoes the designs of modern office buildings. Facilities include a dance studio, sports hall, fitness room, tennis courts, all weather sports pitches, a café and faith centre.

“The projects demonstrate the positive impact design can have on developing new ways of learning, supporting the 14- 19 agenda around vocational learning, and encouraging students to stay on for Further Education,” said James Cowlishaw Capita Symonds' Director of Educational Projects, and LEP Director.

This year marks the biggest opening of new schools for decades with 51 new academies, 24 funded by Building Schools for the Future and more than 150 other new build schools.

Forthcoming Events

Capita Symonds will be attending a number of conferences and events over the coming months.

Why not come along and meet us:

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INTEGRATED TRANSPORT LONDON - Silver Sponsors
Thursday 6th November, Novotel London St Pancras

The Capital’s most prestigious and topical event surrounding the delivery of the Transport Strategy for London and the implementation of a sustainable post-Olympic infrastructure.

Find out more about Integrate Transport London

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PASSENGER TRANSPORT 2008 - Exhibitors
Thursday 13 November 2008, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Planning for our Future Passenger Transport Needs

Find out more about Passenger Transport 2008

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ASSET 2008 - Exhibitor
Thursday 20th November, QEII Centre, London

Managing and relocating the Government estates

Find out more about Asset 08

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THAMES GATEWAY FORUM 2008
Wednesday 26th – Thursday 27th November, ExCel, Docklands

The only event dedicated to bringing together the organisations involved in regenerating the Thames Gateway

Find out more about Thames Gateway Forum 2008
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New Appointment - Alistair Kirk, Director of Engineering and Technology

We have recently appointed Alistair Kirk as our new Director of Engineering and Technology for our Infrastructure Division.

Alistair was previously Director of Controls at Laing O'Rourke, responsible for mitigating pre-contract business risk and assuring project outturns.

He has also worked as Programme Controls Director for Network Rail, managing their projects and engineering works nationally encompassing planning, project controls, estimating and risk management functions.

He also spent 15 years in the defence industry with BAE Systems holding a number of senior management positions, latterly as programme director for the Royal Navy's latest batch of warships and leading one of its aerospace support business units.

Alistair Kirk will be based across our London and East Grinstead offices.

Mossband Viaduct and Eask Bridge videos

NCE (New Civil Engineer) magazine have recently posted a couple of videos on YouTube featuring projects Capita Symonds have been involved in.

Mossband Viaduct and Esk Bridge Move
Both of these projects are part of the bigger "M6 Extension project" to fill the missing link between Scotland and England - currently there is a 9km gap in motorway from the top of the M6 in Carlisle to the A74(M) near Gretna. The new stretch of motorway should ease safety concerns and create a through flow of traffic to and from Scotland on this major route.

Capita Symonds are providing Environmental Assessment, Management and Design, Geotechnical Engineering, Highway Design and Structural Engineering on the project.

Find out more about the M6 Extension project and our involvement


Mossband Viaduct


Esk Bridge Move

http://www.nce.co.uk/

New - Book Health & Safety Training Courses Online

Our Health & Safety Training team, have now launched an online booking form, to make it easier and quicker to sign up for their courses.

Capita Symonds provides many health and safety courses including, IOSH, NEBOSH, CDM 2007, Managing Contractors Safely and Health and Safety leadership.

Find out more about our Health and Safety Training Courses, including courses, dates, venues and presenters.

She bangs the drums.....well a marimba anyway

Justine Lloyd - Project Support for Capita Symonds’ Telecomms division in Cheadle Hulme – has won two major Drum Corp (an American style marching band) awards recently.

Every Saturday Justine (5th from left below) gets up at 0430am to travel from Poynton in the North West to Eastleigh in Hampshire (over 200 miles) to play the ‘Marimba’ (similar to a xylophone) in The Senators band.

The effort is certainly worth it as the team recently won the Drum Corp UK (DCUK) Championship for the eighth time.

What’s more, a week later they beat 20 teams from five countires to win the European Championships (DCE) in the Netherlands - the second year running they’ve won the award – 'drumming' up (sorry) a spectacular 90.20 points out of a 100 in the process.

Capita Symonds Video

If you want to find out more about life in Capita Symonds, our projects, working for us and more, have a look at some of our videos:

Go to our YouTube Channel
See videos on the Capita Symonds website

or watch some of them below:

Capita Symonds at Think 08


Jonathan Goring (our MD) talks about Successful People, Projects and Performance


Rob Firth talks about Capita Architecture


Working at Capita Symonds


Working at Capita Architecture


Wales Millennium Centre - Cardiff


Regeneration and Communities