This Month's Articles: The Quest for Healthcare , Top of the Class, Red Hot and Green, Nurseries - Capability or Culpability |
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The Quest for Healthcare Development |
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Have you ever longed for that Holy Grail of developers: a successful, stress-free project, on time and on budget? |
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Pinders have created a frank and succinct guide to the logical stages of achieving a justified and viable development plan for your care home or site. |
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View and download 'Design to Delivery' online or contact Pinders' Head Office to request a printed copy by post. |
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| Article by Pinders Director Simon Coats |
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Top of the Class
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Pinders went back to the classroom to help Earley St Peters CE Primary School achieve more space for its growing pupil numbers. |
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| We were instructed by the Board of Governors to work as Designer, Contract Administrator and CDM Co-ordinator in developing a new classroom extension. We carried out a feasibility study to identify the most suitable location on site, and once agreed with the Governors, obtained Planning and Building Regulations consent and tendered the project to local contractors (won by Lindum Construction). We also monitored the works on site and managed the financial arrangements to ensure the project was delivered on time and on budget. The new extension is a practical design solution that better utilises 'dead' space whilst blending the structure with the surrounding architecture. |
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Head Teacher, Steve Scott, commented: "The room is in full use and the back of the school looks better than ever. Thank you for managing the project so efficiently - from our point of view everything ran very smoothly, something I know the Governors are very grateful for. We would not hesitate to ask Pinders to be involved again on further projects." |
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| Article by Pinders David Fry |
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Red Hot and Green |
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Pinders has played its part in the creation of the UK's first purpose-built luxury eco-hotel, The Scarlet in Mawgan Porth, Cornwall. |
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Enjoying a spectacular location overlooking the Atlantic, The Scarlet is built into a steep hillside on a series of levels. The hotel combines Cornish vernacular, using untreated and recycled timber, local stone, and sea thrift on green roofs, with modern European style, offering a funky yet luxurious spa style interior. |
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Pinders' role was as Monitoring Surveyors for the bank, overseeing a complex multi-million pound build with a number of challenges posed by the demands of the site, the needs of the neighbours, the environmental considerations, and the fact that the architects, despite their talent and flair, had never designed a hotel before! |
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The hotel's carbon footprint is a quarter that of an average building of this size, thanks to 'green' features like a biomass boiler, ventilation heat exchange, grey water and rainwater harvesting, and low energy lighting, as well as passive heating and cooling through clever design of the building. The outdoor pool is heated by solar panels and filtered by reed beds. |
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| Even before opening, the hotel has received favourable reviews in the national press, with Stephen Bleach of The Times describing it as "a modern classic... its eco credentials don't stop The Scarlet being stylish, innovative, decadent, fun and distinctly sexy". |
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| Article by Pinders Director Ray Chamberlin |
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Nurseries - Capability or Culpability? |
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Despite the practice of 'open government' not many people realise that a department known as the Capability Group exists within the civil service to help develop existing and future leaders within its various Whitehall departments. Through this it aims to ensure that we, the citizens, are reassured by these leaders as our expectation of public services grows ever more demanding, and policy issues correspondingly become increasingly complex. |
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Perhaps we should set this in the context of early years care and education concerning recent reports in the media that inspectors have found that almost one in three early years childcare providers is offering only inadequate or satisfactory child protection. Furthermore, almost a thousand providers were rated inadequate in promoting child welfare and about one in 20 providers were judged to be inadequate in leading and managing the new Early Years Foundation Stage, the learning framework for children aged under five. |
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As an industry, blame for such judgments is often placed on the 'system', particularly an increase in regulation. Yet, if operators wish to improve the trading success of their business and, ultimately its value to the market, ensuring a 'top rated' Ofsted report must be seen as critical. This involves more honest, open and, sometimes, painful self-analysis with responsibility being accepted by providers for shortcomings identified within reports. Rather than do this, it seems that 'blaming the inspector' is fast becoming the cultural norm, engendered and encouraged by a system that is desperate to be seen as 'fair to all'. In reality the vast majority of inspectors are simply applying the rules as fairly as the system allows them to. |
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Apparently, Capability Group training requires one simple thing: that our civil service leaders build on their strengths and address their weaknesses. Unfortunately, most nursery businesses and their leaders don't have their own departments to support their efforts in this. But they do have something just as good: at least they have an Ofsted inspector. |
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| Article by Pinders Director Steve Marriott |
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