Working with ‘all sorts…..
Working With All Sorts, Both in Terms of People and Materials… And the Importance of Food in the Mix ….
In the summer there is something fantastic about working outside, creating shapes with the hard landscaping. I was rummaging around looking for some other pictures when I came across these images depicting the architectural shapes you can create with bricks, cobbles, terracotta, tiles and wood… And then it all came back to me!! …..
I have blogged before about Badminton Court, Amersham, Bucks, a project we undertook and won a design award and the development was listed on completion. A fabulous job, but …. It was more than a bit of an undertaking …. To put it mildly!! …
Badminton Court formally the Goya perfumery headquarters, had fallen on hard times and was ripe for redevelopment, the developer Mr Trevor Wynne-Jones had a vision of what he wanted….. This was a very, very expensive build for a very demanding, highly strung, but to be fair a visionary developer who wanted us to push our design abilities to the extremes on every front….. Everything was purpose built, nothing was bought off the shelf, and it takes nerves to build like this as you have to take risks …. Not to mention a big bank account!…. The finished article on completion commanded the same price per square metre as a prestige office building in Mayfair, London ….. Not bad!!
For a development like this you need a crew of many and varied specialist trades people. And along with the people comes their own quirks and styles of working….. You need to take on the persona of a councillor to deal with these cast of characters, calming the waters to get them to see it your way!!…. A lot of tears and tantrums and sometimes tiaras, (worn by me)!... Tea/sympathy along with the all-important bacon sarnie to help us get you through the project!! ….
We were involved with ‘Bad Court’ from conception, but unlike most jobs, where you work to plans and designs that are prepared in advance and / or worked-up whilst construction is in process... On this job, designs were more or less created as we went along, changes made, materials torn down and more designs recreated. If the developer had been away on holiday for example he would come back with a new design idea, which we would have to expand and incorporate into the construction ….. This did make the project an eclectic mix.
Returning from a visit to Barbados, the developer had noticed that instead of down pipes to take away rain water from buildings, they used chains that dropped to the ground from the gutters above. This created an almost waterfall effect with the typical rainy British weather.… To be honest I am not sure it was totally effective with the UK weather.
The developer who lived a very extravagant lifestyle, seemed always to be, ‘at lunch’, however he called it ‘seeing the banks in London’… These long lunches would elongate the project as he would come back ‘merry’ and want yet another change! He also had an exasperating penchant for employing his buddies, giving them fancy job titles and putting them in positions on the project that they had no experience at all…. A nightmare!! He would have more lunches with them .. Until they were like the rest dispensed with when he fell out with them, which he always did ..
This made the job even more complex to keep any sort of overall control on the design... One hapless newly employed friend of the developer, who happened to be an ex-publican, was given the new shinny title of “site project manager”, in this position he was employed to deal with the tradesmen… It was of course a disaster, he had no idea how to undertake this role, no idea how to deal with tradesmen and the trade’s people hated him for it….. No professional wants to be told how to do something by a person who does not know how to do it in the first place! ……The publican would go off every day on three hour lunch sessions coming back totally blotto, incapable of walking, he would go into his caravan on site and sleep the afternoon away!! … There was much a real wave of aggression across the site about his behaviour …. It was quite difficult to control the feelings of these tradesmen at times..
The publican was, like the rest unceremoniously dispatched to the - “I’m bored with you graveyard”…. A new site project manager was found, immediately, another friend of the developer… Who actually had experience in project management! The only problem was that, as it turned out, he was hated even more by the tradesmen …… His name was Dick, which to be fair is a popular name but on a building site gives the dissenters plenty of scope for ridicule! ... He was gauche in the extreme but he was the developer’s new favourite toy …. Dick had zero subtlety or diplomacy…. Which did not exactly enthuse the trade’s men, it grated in the extreme…. I have never worked with anyone so disliked ….. Sitting in the canteen, which is the best place to hear all the gossip… They were plotting against him, chatting over their bacon butties and tea, scheming on the ‘Demise of Dick’… If the workforce takes a dislike to you on a building site in can be dangerous! … And Dick was “ruffling feathers” big time...
Dick had a German wife who made him the most indulgent three course packed lunches…. Dick would not condescend to eat with his workforce, he would distance himself to some vantage spot, unpack his feast and gorge!... Over a long lunch.. Dick’s gourmet dinners became the subject of mutinous talk …. A plot was hatched to steal his lunch… Which Dick became aware of, he hitched up his trousers, put on his steel toe capped boots and HiVis jacket and went on site to give the tradesmen some grief!…. Workmen and their food - never underestimate what can happen!!
The following day an entire wheel barrow of bricks was unloaded out of a second floor window onto where Dick was standing beneath … Thankfully the assassination attempt failed, by chance he had stepped forward and the falling masonry missed by a millimetre! The internal investigation did not identify the guilty perpetrators….
Dick’s demise came, as it inevitably would! During an on-site meeting with the developer, (and others). Dick in a rare and unsolicited moment of euphoria decided to cement his relationship with the decidedly smaller and wider developer. He threw his arms around him, lift him off the ground and shook him in a cuddly sort of ‘bear hug’ way… Dick was off the project - forthwith …
The metal work on the project was quite fantastic, crafted by hand in the old style forge by the talented Trevor, [not the developer], he was known on site as “Metal Mickey”. Wearing baggy blue denims and a characteristic we liked him …. On one occasion the developer embarrassed Metal Mickey in front of us all by saying that he was going to knock off £5 from one of Trevor’s invoices, as he thought he was being over charged, considering the invoices were in the thousands £5, was a nominal amount? The developer did this type of thing from time to time, it was his way to belittle people and show everyone who the boss was. This deduction cost the developer dear, as every time Metal Mickey quoted for a job thereafter, he would come up with a figure and without exception or a blink of the eye he would say to the developer, - ‘oh and plus £5 for this or that’. He must have got his £5 back countless times. Touché …. And the developer never picked it up!
The Quantity Surveyor for the project, John Searle was a nervous, introspective man with a pasty complexion, good at what he did but was uncomfortable on a site of workmen, he would stammer if he was engaged in conversation publicly. John’s way of dealing with the developer’s hysteria would be to suddenly in the middle of a meeting pick up his brief case, pack it up and just walk out and go home to his mother, without another word. John would not eat, at least not publicly, which meant his stomach made the loudest objectionable rumbling noises at its lack of nourishment!.. I could make him laugh, I am a good mimic and I would entertain him with little scenarios that had happened on site. John would crumble and hold his stomach and gurgle with laughter and his legs would raise in the air. He was a nice man, who we became fond of….
George, the “bricky”, a “steel reinforced” who looked like he had been cast in concrete. He always had a packet of Wagon Wheel biscuits near where he was working.. George created wonderful brick constructions, which was very much the character of Badminton Court… The big problem with him, was our designs demanded a “historic” flavour rather than the exacting plumb and dot symmetry he was used to building, we wanted to replicate the original construction as it would have been. He complained endlessly, he just could not understand our thinking, because he assured us that he was a professional and he could get all his brick work completely ‘plumb’ lined and straight! He did not get the aesthetic point in our design theme. He really did moan!...
The plasterer Harry Turner was much liked by the developer, and in fairness most of the others on-site…. When the project was finally finished the developer had brass plaques engraved and placed them on the building to testify to the “works of excellence of the trades people”, he had pet names for people ….. The plasterer had the dubious plaque name of Turners Passage, as he had created the vaulted arched ceiling!
The sparks, who like most electricians you would suppose would be been fully conversant with working on “live” cables”, however had the disconcerting habit of electrocuting himself on a regular basis. His wife attributed this habit to his penchant for sleep walking when he was at home. However as it turned out he was not just sleepwalking, but he had homicidal tendencies whilst asleep, [allegedly]. A fact that his wife was only comfortable when she had him tied to the bed at night to stop him from sleepwalking, as his neighbours were complaining about him walking around their gardens naked…..And threatening them …..
The designing of Badminton Court was without doubt an experience. The outcome was magnificent as you can see…. One other memory of working on this project was the scaffolders…. Who had fallen out over some issue at their lunchtime break ….. This disagreement as it happens, escalated during the afternoon and a grudge match between the two men took hold….. A fight started on the third storey, these are men of steel, in the true sense of the word… And their chosen weapon was scaffold poles. The noise around the site was immense as they swung at each and the poles crunched against the built scaffold and clanging against the building. The language was pretty blue too! On the ground, looking up. The site came to a standstill. Then a few men started shouting at them to calm down. One of them was hit and it was not pretty….. Suddenly the vicar from the Amersham church opposite on the other side of the River Misbourne came running over… He held his arms open and appealed for calm, there was a few more clangs from the scaffold poles and then the two men put down their weapons and it was over… Ten minutes later these two men were sitting in the cafeteria, bloodied drinking tea and eating bacon sandwiches!
What crazy mad fun …. Beautiful shapes created.. And all in a day’s work!!
