Christmas Newsletter 2019 Final Final draft

CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER Where did 2019 go? The first thing that we should do is apologise for this being the first newsletter of the year, time just seemed to slip by without the opportunity to produce our usual Spring and Autumn offerings, so this one will be a bumper edition. The past 12 months, have been very busy for all of us; whilst fortunately we have worked for the most part in the North of England, we have also had some of our longest running jobs outside of the region. A recurring theme throughout most of the year (and indeed last year) was the weekly journey to Coventry, to work on the Destination Water project for Buckingham Group. Our package ran from May 2018 right through to September this year, with a double figure sized squad for most of that period and a peak of 24 guys on site in April this year. Andy Todd stepped up to the plate and undertook a full time Supervisor role to great effect, showing a real aptitude for the role, which we would hope he shall reprise many times in the years to come. When the facility opened in October (as The Wave), the client and the builder were both delighted with our workmanship and our attitude to working on the site – well done to Andy’s team. The Wave Buxton Crescent Hotel Following a similar weekly journey, over an even more extended time frame, a squad led by Bob Robson have been steadily chipping away at the continuously growing mountain of work presented by the Buxton Crescent Hotel project. The Grade 1 listed, 5 Star, Peak District hotel and spa has had us on site since October 2017, continuously since March 2018, and is unlikely to finish before our Christmas break this year; so safely takes the title for longest running project. The works have been quite varied, with ornate ensuite bathrooms, grand hallways, spa pools and bathing pools amongst the miriad of tiling challenges that we were presented with. Again the site team have done a splendid job, often in quite difficult circumstances, and have turned out a 5 star finish that befits the status of the project and satisfies both the main contractor Vinci and the client. Issue 13.1 Page |1

The year also started with some noteable projects closer to home, with South Shields Transport Interchange and the NICAD Building for Newcastle University prominent, as well as the completion of the Forth Banks residential development and a nice little quality project at Cummins, Darlington, which has lead to further work for the fit-out contractor Overbury, due to the quality of our service. The former Newcastle Brewery site also saw us undertake other Newcastle University projects – the Learning and Teaching Centre and The Lumen Building, both highly regarded architecturally in the city. Indeed universities have provided a significant source of work Lower Mountjoy T&LC for us throughout the year; Warwick University Leisure Centre was still underway at the start of the year and we have completed both Lower Mountjoy Teaching & Learning Centre and Maiden Castle Sports Pavilion (Galliford Try), as well as commencing the Maths & Science Building (SRM) for Durham University. Further university sites included the Willmott Dixon Student Life Building for Teesside University and BAM’s Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre for Sheffield Hallam University, as well as the related student accommodation sites in Durham, Leeds and Hull. Another strong source of work for us this year has been hotel development. Notwithstanding the Buxton Project, we also undertook two projects for Center Parcs Sherwood Forest, the Roxburgh Hotel in Kelso (with which the fit-out contractor Sharkey were very impressed, contracting us for an additional phase and keen to work with us again), Simpson’s Moxy Hotel in York, The Impeccable Pig for Ramside Estates and Morgan Sindall’s Project Medius in Leicester, which is a development comprising of office accommodation together with both a Novotel and an Adagio Hotel. The latter element has been largely undertaken by two of our newest recruits, Mitchell Bland and Lewis Robinson, who have produced outstanding work on some quite complex floor designs. Adagio Hotel Our Leeds regional office undertook a number of projects Lower Mountjoy T&LC throughout the year, but we increasingly found the need to resource projects from our home base, as the quality and reliability of labour available to us in the area was generally not up to our usual standard. Consequently projects such as Aireborough Leisure Centre and 7&8 Wellington Place Leeds had to be rescued by sending teams in from the North East to get the works back on track and to appease the builders. The efforts of the guys that went down to complete these two difficult jobs is appreciated and the lessons from the venture have been learned. We wouldn’t be Plunkett Tiling if we didn’t have a number of “pool” projects each year and 2019 has been no different. As well as the Warwick, Coventry and Center Parcs projects that carried through from last year, we also carried out re-tiling works to Freemans Reach in Durham (where the render had failed on the pool walls). Works have also commenced on both Ingleby Barwick Leisure Centre for Willmott Dixon and Oundle School Leisure Centre for Graham Construction; both these projects shall run well into the new year. Issue 13.1 Page |2

This year has also seen us involved in the largest country house to be built in Yorkshire in the last 200 years. The future home of a prominent local sporting figure and successful business man is rumoured to be costing in the region of £50million. It has been specified with expensive materials and to exacting workmanship standards; the quality of finish envisaged meant that the main contractor Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd “could not even consider anyone else” to carry out the tiling package. The truth of it may well be a little different but, nonetheless the standards that we have had to work to on the site have set a very high bar. The works ranged from 150x75 glazed bevelled edge wall tiles, fixed stretcher bond, with mitred corners, included an ornate French limestone floor of over 500M² and the walls and floors of a private leisure suite. The ceramics package alone included over 500M² of wall tiling and almost 900M² of porcelain floor tiling, all of the highest standard of finish. The preparation works prior to tiling were a task on their own, with over 1400M² of Schluter Ditra25 matting and typically 15mm depth of levelling screed to be carried out before a floor tile could be laid; all this in a private residence! We have successfully carried out a number of notable “stand Newcastle Civic Centre alone” projects this year, including the prestigious refurbishment of Newcastle Civic Centre for SRM, a new build Lidl Store in Cockermouth for Thomas Armstrong and a new Amazon Distribution Centre in Darlington for ISG, all of which will hopefully lead to repeat work in the future. Lidl Cockermouth All in all it has been a pretty busy year on site and in the office, with some high quality work carried out and some very large projects completed. We don’t know where the time went, this year has just flown by, but our reputation has been enhanced and connections reinforced, which will help us move forward and secure more work for the future. Well done one and all. Issue 13.1 Page |3

Geoff After almost 29 years of service to the company, Managing Director Geoff Williams has announced that he plans to retire in June 2020. Currently Plunkett Tiling’s longest serving employee, Geoff started when Paddy and Angus Harbottle were running jobs on site and most of our work was on Safeway Superstores. Geoff became MD in 1997 and the company has changed immeasurably since that time. He was instrumental in the transition from our reliance on a single supermarket chain to a broader more varied client base and has directly managed many of our larger and more prestigious projects over the years. Such projects include Killingworth Lakeside Leisure Centre for Rok (whatever happened to them?), Alderhey Chidren’s Health Park and Northern Rock HQ, both for Laing O’Rourke; more laterly Buxton Crescent Hotel & Spa for Vinci and Destination Water (The Wave) in Coventry for Buckingham Group have been under his direct management. He may more proudly remember his involvement with Intu Metro Centre Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd and the mammoth undertaking of the Metro Centre and Eldon Square Intu Shopping Centres, where over a number of years he developed a strong relationship with many of the SRM team and managed a backbone of work for the company. It is fitting that one of his last major projects would be the the enormous country house Ravenswick Hall, at Kirkbymoorside (near to his childhood home) for Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd. Ravenswick Hall Geoff will continue to run projects and carry out his MD duties before handing over the reigns to Steven Allsopp as the new MD. Steven’s task will be to move the company forward in a more streamlined manner, with a change of focus for work to suit the smaller management team. The vision is to undertake more of the larger type projects, at which we excel, such as leisure centres and the larger commercial developments, and move away from the multitude of smaller projects that we have historically filled out our works programme with. This, in all likelihood will have both a geographical and skill set impact on the site teams, with a more settled programme envisaged, carrying out the projects where our experience and tiling skills lift us above the norm and undertaking fewer of the small, less well managed, reactive projects. This is a significant change in strategy and one that shall require the total commitment of those that choose to follow Steven and the company on its path. We shall embrace the modern site culture regarding Health & Safety, new technology and a collaborative approach and make sure that the construction industry of the new decade works for us rather than against us, as it is often perceived today. To do so we shall need a strong core team, highly skilled and motivated, with no passengers – everyone contributing. Issue 13.1 Page |4

What does the future hold? The coming 12 months holds a larger than usual degree of uncertainty for us all. Not only are we looking at a future dependent upon a pre-Christmas general election to give us an idea of how/if Brexit will pan out, what sort of government shall be presiding over us and what effect this shall all have on the construction industry, but we shall do this whilst planning for the retirement of our MD Geoff Williams and the appointment of his successor Steven Allsopp. Steven’s fresh vision for the company shall take time to bed in and establish itself, but in the interim we have works to complete and others to commence in the New Year. Two key projects that commenced in the latter part of 2019 shall form the backbone of work for the first couple of months, with the leisure facilities at both Oundle School and Ingleby Barwick taking a significant part of our resources in the first months of the New Year. There are other projects that have only just started in December that shall supplement these two, with the university theme being carried on by SRM’s Maths & Science Building for Durham Uni and BAM’s Health Innovation Campus for Lancaster Uni, where we have a contemporary “dry lay” floor tiling system to fit as well as the more traditional fixing. New office developments for Willmott Dixon in Gateshead and Darlington also help to kick start our year and the new Melia Riverside Hotel on Newcastle Quayside shall carry us through into Spring, backed up by a new HQ for Bellways Homes near Newcastle Airport and the next phase of Center Parcs Sherwood Forest. Further projects in the pipeline, many of which build upon established relationships, include another, larger, Amazon Distribution Centre and the refurbishment of a large Oundle School shopping centre. We are busy negotiating for a further three leisure facilities and are in the mix for a number of university projects too. The medium to long term landscape looks very good, with a high number of noteable projects already in the early stages of negotiation. Whilst the main focus of our attentions is on work in the Northern Regions, we are also narrowing our view to target only larger scale projects, which will inevitably take us out of the region. Hopefully this more targetted approach will ease the management travel time between sites, with fewer but larger projects, enabling us to sustain a similar turnover of work despite the loss of a senior member of the site management team. Our prospects for the future are very good, with any uncertainty being viewed as an opportunity rather than a concern. Issue 13.1 Page |5

Changing Responsibilities One of the consequences of Geoff’s retirement will be a smaller site management team. Clearly, losing an experienced contracts manager will have an impact on the number of projects that we can manage and the inexperience of our new trainee contracts manager, Ryan, will mean that it will be quite some time before he can fill Geoff’s shoes with the same volume of work. In an attempt to reduce that management gap, we plan to take on fewer projects, but with a focus on larger schemes, so that the volume of work is not significantly reduced. To facilitate this we shall require the Supervisor role to encompass a greater degree of responsibility; he will likely spend more of his time on Supervisor duties on the larger, more intensively managed sites that we are targetting, with more briefings to attend and H&S management to deal with. Coupled with this shall be the need for the rest of the site team to also take greater responsibility. Simple things like looking after plant properly, storing materials safely and tidily, reducing waste and losses and showing greater respect for the Supervisors will all make the jobs run smoother. We are asking you all to buy into this, so that we can carry on with a similar sized site team, undertaking a similar volume of work. If you feel that you can do better than the guy supervising your site, why not speak to your line manager and volunteer to become a Supervisor yourself. If you are not prepared to do that then instead of grumbling and counterproductively working against your supervisor, please try to assist him; show some initiative and take responsibility for any of the daily actions that the supervisor needs to sort out. Greater teamwork will mean the work is done quicker and more efficiently and more time can be spent productively fixing tiles and earning money. Team Building As we move into 2020 and a new decade, with a new MD on the horizon, we wish to improve the culture of the company in terms of the sense of belonging, camaraderie and responsibility. It is our intention to try to work on all of these aspects of the company’s character in an effort to lift team morale, performance and efficiency. To this end we are planning to conduct, throughout the year, a number of social events and a rewards/awards evening, to help bring us all closer together and improve team interactions and communication. If you have any ideas that would suit such an event or events, then please pass these on to your line manager or email them to [email protected] . Your input to this process is very important, so please give this some considered thought. Issue 13.1 Page |6

Leeds Just over 2 years ago we undertook a project to develop a satelite office in Leeds. We knew that there was a strong construction marketplace in Leeds, with a vast amount of development going on in the city and along the M62 corridor. The idea was to create a regional office in the area, that could nurture a source of work and develop enquiries and contacts as a “local” business. We had hoped to supplement our existing, primarily Tyneside based, workforce with a small directly employed team in Leeds. Whilst we were successful in developing contacts and securing a number of projects in the region, we were not so successful in securing the necesarry local labour. As a new company in the area, we were unable to persuade good tilers to commit to us on a “cards in” basis and the resultant reliance on sub-contract labour proved problematic. To avoid damaging the company’s good reputation, that had been cultivated over the previous 40 years, we decided against continuing with the regional office in September. The office is now closed and all contracts shall now be run solely from Prudhoe, utislising our exceptional existing site team, supplemented with reliable sub-contract labour where necesarry. Unfortunately this means that Regional Manager Andy Hill has left the company and moved on to pastures new. New Arrivals Trainee Contracts Manager We have introduced some youth into our site management team this year, with the hiring of a new trainee contracts manager – Ryan Burr. Ryan comes into the team fresh from university, but with a background in supermarket management and logistics to help him and no “baggage” to deal with, as may have happened if he came to us from another tiling contractor. He has spent most of the year, since his start in April, learning how the company functions at all levels; you may have met him on site delivering materials in the yard van or shadowing one of the other contracts managers. He has studied our pricing system and our materials and resource management systems, recently undertaking his first project to manage on his own. His development will continue to be supported by the more experienced staff as he takes a firmer grip on managing his own site projects. Please take the time to welcome him, help educate him as to the standards of workmanship that you can all produce and assist him as he develops into the role. Apprentice Another difficult year in securing suitable candidates for apprenticeships has managed to provide us however with a great young lad to fill one apprectice slot this year. Elliott Pick has joined us after having spent a year at Ashington College, studying for his NVQ Level 1 in wall and floor tiling. Spending his first year with the company under the watchful eye of Paul Plunkett and studying at Leeds College for his NVQ Level 2, Elliott will hopefully develop quickly, to become a valuable member of our site team and follow in the footsteps of a long line of apprentices going back well over 20 years. Welcome to Plunketts Elliott. Issue 13.1 Page |7

Social Media By now you should all have participated in our Social Media Toolbox Talk. As with all toolbox talks, it is important to remember the points and subjects discussed in this, as your actions and words can affect the morale of your workmates and the way in which both yourself and the company are viewed by others. They could also have implications for yourself in terms of company regulations and more importantly legal repercussions. Very often clients prohibit the taking and posting of photographs of their sites as part of the contractual obligations of the company; breaches of this prohibition could have costly consequences for all concerned. Most of us enjoy a bit of banter and social media is one way of doing so, but let us also have respect for one another, for the company and for our clients. Let us all just think before we post and make sure we are happy with the consequences of any social media posts that we put out. John Brown RIP It is with a heavy heart that we remember the passing of John Brown this year, way before “his time”. A man’s man and a comedian, it was around this time last year when John started to feel less like the machine that we had all come to know, getting tired and fatigued when undertaking the heavy jobs on site. John’s illness rapidly seemed to overtake him after it was diagnosed, yet one feels that a lesser man would have succumed much sooner. Passing away in April, he is missed by all who knew him and particularly by his family and workmates. May he rest in peace. Norman Paddy presents Norman with a 25 year service gift 25 years ago, gone October, Norman Vose joined the company as a labourer. Coming in on the recommendation of Jimmy Cooper and Keith Cassels, he joined to assist on the new Aldi Store site in Chester-le-Street amid stories that he had single handedly carried out all the epoxy grouting on the North Shields Wet ‘n’ Wild development earlier that year. Since that time Norman has proven himself to be a loyal and invaluable member of our site team, with a definite aptitude for epoxy grouting. A strong character and, by his own admission, not always the easiest to get along with, he is one of the hardest workers, a good team man and a perenial joker. Thank you Norman for your 25 years of service, your commitment to your work and your workmates and the dependability that you have brought as you have developed with the company over the years. As currently the longest serving member of the site team, we hope that your commitment continues for many years to come; you are much appreciated and an example to all. Issue 13.1 Page |8

Ian Biggins In April this year Ian Biggins announced his retirement after 14 years service. He started for us in May 2005, with his first job being Durham Bus Station and he has been an invaluable member of the site team ever since. We wish him well in his retirement. Small Plant and Hand Tools We are currently reviewing our small plant and hand tools policy, with a view to considering new cordless technology, looking into the care of plant and also financial responsibility for every day hand tools and small plant. We shall be looking at a number of options over the coming weeks, and testing various products, before rolling out a plan later in the year. A FINAL WORD FROM PADDY This newsletter talks at length about three guys who between them have given almost 70 years of service to the company and a fourth who has sadly passed away, but whose association with the company has spanned close to 30 years. These guys epitomise the commitment that we are looking for from you all as we move into the new decade, with a new vision, led by a new MD. This is a great opportunity for the company to progress and grow, by recognising changes in the industry and our need to change with it, to stay as a leading light in the trade. A special word of thanks must go to Geoff for leading us through the previous seismic change in the company, when we moved away from reliance on Safeway, but now we need to look ahead and move to a new future in this ever evolving industry. It is that time of year again, when we all get to lift our foot off the pedal and take two weeks to relax and socialise with friends and family. Enjoy the festivities everyone and come back refreshed ready to tackle the new decade as an even better team. Paddy Issue 13.1 Page |9