A team of four Baily Garner apprentices from our Birmingham office got to visit a housing development organised by our Assistant Building Surveyor Caroline Chell, seeing a project come to life in Stafford. Original article by Bellway.
Our apprentices were taken to Ashberry Homes’ Victoria Place site on Wednesday 12 June and given a tour of the pre-plastered site.
Our team of apprentices got to see how new-build homes are put together on a site visit to a housing development in Stafford. They were taken on a pre-plaster tour of a partially built property at Ashberry Homes’ Victoria Place.
The visit was arranged by Caroline Chell, Assistant Building Surveyor from our Birmingham team. Caroline had been given a similar tour as she is currently in the process of buying a home at the development. She asked Ashberry Homes if they could arrange a similar experience for the apprentices at Baily Garner to give them an insight into the processes involved in constructing a home.
Andy Adams, Site Manager at Victoria Place, greeted the team and gave them a chance to walk around an unfinished plot and see all the elements that make it function, such as the electric, gas and water services and the internal structure, before the rooms are completed and plastered.
Will Gregory, Senior Associate Partner at Baily Garner said: ‘It’s great to see Caroline considering the development of our apprentices and we are very grateful for Ashberry Homes in providing the team with this opportunity. I’m sure the visit will provide an excellent learning opportunity for our apprentices and will help develop their understanding of construction technology. These kinds of initiatives help accelerate the development of our apprentices, positively impacting their lives and directly supports our ‘grow our own’ ethos.”
Caroline Chell said: “Andy was fabulous in answering all the questions from the Baily Garner apprentice team. He was more than accommodating escorting us behind the Heras fencing to fully understand the complex nature of groundworks and preparation of the balancing ponds, you can clearly see why he is an award-winning site manager”
Andy Adams said: “I am very proud of the quality of our work here at Victoria Place and it was a real pleasure to welcome these apprentices onto the site and to give them a pre-plaster tour. It was a great opportunity for the group to ask questions about what goes into the building of a new home and to find out more about the development as a whole. The group were a credit to Baily Garner and were really engaged throughout their visit. I think taking the build process out of the classroom and showing the apprentices how it works in practice was really beneficial for them as things are often much clearer and easier to take in when you see them in real life.”
Ashberry Homes, which is part of the Bellway Group, is building 143 homes at Victoria Place. The development will provide 121 homes for private sale alongside 22 affordable properties, which will be available for local people through low-cost rent or shared ownership.
Victoria Place is part of a wider project to regenerate the 30-acre former General Electric site off Ranshaw Drive, where Bellway is building 210 homes next door at Victoria Gate.
Lisa Morris, Sales Manager at Ashberry Homes, said: “Our pre-plaster visits are designed to give our customers a better understanding of how their homes work before they move in. It’s really great to know that Caroline found her tour so useful that she thought it would be a valuable experience for the apprentices too.
“We were more than happy to accommodate Caroline’s request and it was nice to be able to use this unfinished plot to give apprentices in the industry a real insight into how a new-build home is put together.”
