Month: December 2015

We are proud to announce we have supported Warwick Myton Hospice in giving the centre a makeover.

Through its’ patient and family support services, the Coventry and Warwickshire based charity provides vital assistance to 1,000 patients and their families each year, from hospices in Warwick, Rugby and Coventry.

The initiative has presented us with the opportunity to give back to the community by donating members of staff to decorate sections of the Myton Hospice in Warwick.

Tony Mitchell, Operations Manager, said: “The specialist care Myton Hospice gives to people who are terminally ill is magnificent. We were delighted to have the opportunity to help maintain one of their first-class facilities, helping ensure their patients have a comfortable environment to be cared in.”

Over the last couple of years, we have adopted a more strategic approach with a number of Midlands-based leading organisations, including: Morgan Sindall, John Sisk & Son, Aston University, Kier Group, Galliford Try, Birmingham City University and Lovell Partnerships. The change in policy has enabled our business to deliver the highest standards across projects in Birmingham, including: St. Modwen’s Longbridge Town Centre Phase 2 scheme, Alumno Developments’ Number One City Locks, Aston Student Village scheme and The New Assay Office and in-turn, grow turnover by 59.98%, from £17.5m to £28.03m.

This financial success has been the driving force behind the company backing a wealth of community support initiatives, including:

• Sponsored two primary schools in Cubbington as part of the ‘For Schools Warwickshire Road Safety Club’.
• Entered a 14-strong team in the 10K Warwickshire Wolf Run Challenge and raised £1,758 for the West Midlands Alzheimer’s Society.
• Funded four assisted holidays for South Warwickshire charity, ILEAP.
• Supported Leamington-based The British Blind Sports charity in their 40^th Anniversary, to assist blind and partially sighted children and adults in their pursuit of sports participation.

“Our business is run on good family values and we actively get involved in schemes that benefit the local community. 2014/2015 has delivered a record turnover and this financial success has given us the platform to be able to do even more with local charities.”

Phill Jones, Myton Hospice, Estates Manager at the Warwick Hospice, said: “We would like to say an extremely big thank you to O’Brien Contractors who have spent almost three weeks helping transform our Warwick Myton Hospice. Their voluntary labour has saved Myton a significant amount of money. We greatly appreciate their hard work and generosity.”

For further information about Myton Hospice, please visit their website: www.mytonhospice.org

We have been awarded the silver prize at the 2015 International Green Apple Environment Awards.

Our earthworks remediation solution, implemented as part of the £11m groundworks and civil engineering package at Nestle’s £200m coffee manufacturing facility, was the key factor for receiving the award.

The judges were looking for evidence that the winning project considered the impact on the environment and contemplated sustainability. With 2012 the wettest year on record, our team were presented with a site containing 40,000m3 of spoil not suitable for re-use. The original solution proposed by our engineer was no longer viable.

To overcome this, we developed and implemented a remediation strategy, that subsequently cut costs by £800k, reduced lorry movements by c7,000 saving 15 tonnes CO2, retained all spoil on-site and reduced imported stone by 70%. Our project team also achieved a zero accident performance with in excess of 90,000 man hours worked and created a safer stable site for ongoing construction work.

Peter O’Brien, Managing Director, said: “Across all the projects we operate on we pride ourselves on delivering a solution that considers the environment. To further endorse this commitment, we will continue to significantly invest in our earthworks service to ensure we provide clients with the most efficient earthworks solutions and also help them reduce waste and costs. Any recognition in the form of an award is very much well received.”

The award judges commented: “The best-laid plans often fall victim to outside influence such as the weather – as was the case with this project for Nestle. After planning approval, the scheme experienced the highest-ever rainfall, which made the plans all but impossible. O’Brien management brainstormed the issue and came up with a novel work-around that utilised remediation instead of excavation that not only got the project back on track, but offered a massive reduction in vehicle movements and saved a whopping 15 tons of CO2 emissions.”

Commenting on the scheme, Ian Donaldson, Project Director, John Sisk & Son, said: “O’Brien Contractors involvement was the catalyst in developing the most cost effective and least environmentally damaging solution to the problem of a saturated site and they have been a crucial factor to the success of the project.”