WINNERS of the Scaffolding Excellence Awards 2024 have been announced at a ceremony in Belfast.
The awards marked the culmination of the Scaffex24 expo, organised by the National Access and Scaffolding Confederation (NASC).
Clive Dickin, CEO at NASC, said the awards again highlighted the ‘incredible innovation and high-quality work’ within the sector. He also praised the judges, who he said had been ‘incredibly conscientious and meticulous’ in their work.
The chair of the judging panel was Dr James MacFadden, senior responsible CSA engineer at Sellafield. He was joined by Caroline Gumble, CEO, Chartered Institute of Building; Ken Johnson from the No Falls Foundation; Andrew Stotesbury, formerly temporary works lead, Lendlease; Zilvinas Rubinas, principal structural engineer, Goldberg Engineering; Tim Balcon, chief executive, CITB; and Damini Sharma, CEO, The OM Group.
The Apprentice of the Year award went to Albie Cooper from Benchmark Scaffolding. Albie was described by his site manager, Jack Murphy, as ‘up there with the best I have ever seen attitude-wise in all my years of scaffolding’. Albie received an additional prize of £1,000, courtesy of CISRS.
The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Lee Rowswell, group director of GKR Scaffolding. Rowswell has taken GKR from a turnover of £800,000 to £36 million and delivered several landmark projects over the last 30 years. He has led on the green agenda, diversity and innovation, and worked with NASC in a range of roles.
Product of the Year was identified as PERI’s PERI Up Cladding system, which offers protection to scaffolders, building contractors and the public, while also being flexible, thanks to individual panels that can be removed without needing to dismantle surrounding components.
Shield Services Group triumphed in the Project of the Year (Small) category for its work to erect a 50-metre temporary roof structure over Cathedral Park in Bristol City Centre, as well as a 15-metre birdcage inside the converted cathedral.
Project of the year (Medium) went to Inner City Scaffolding, for developing a ‘complex and innovative’ solution to provide safe access for a re-cladding project on a live building. They delivered the work on Parkside Court with ‘precision and excellence’, with judges describing it as ‘the scaffolder’s scaffold’.
Lyndon SGB took home the Project of the Year (Large) accolade for a project that was also a finalist in the Design category, namely the Grade-A listed New Register House in Scotland. The restrictions on the scaffold work demanded creative, innovative and expert solutions, especially as much work was done in a cold Scottish winter and the building remained open to the public throughout. Among some outstanding finalists, the judges picked out Lyndon SGB for its coordination, collaboration, safety and management of a large, complex job.
Project of the Year (Major) was awarded to GKR Scaffolding for its work at 25 Canada Square, one of the largest refurbishment projects in Europe. The scaffold required a year of planning and collaborative design work to deliver a bespoke solution to this project in the heart of Canary Wharf.
SRK Scaffolding won the Scaffold Design of the Year category for designing a scaffold to access and encapsulate a 33-metre high, 27-metre diameter industrial storage tank to allow the tank’s roof to be reinsulated. As well as technical challenges, the project had to be completed in a very short timescale.
Service of the Year went to Costain, Skanska and Strabag’s Scaffold Request App, which streamlined the scaffold request system on the SCS HS2 JV, saving time and money while maintaining safe delivery.
