100 Years of Cementation

100 years of
Cementation
1910 - 2010
Compiled by Dick O’Driscoll
Grouting in the crypt of St. Pauls Cathedral 1925
Contents
Above: City of London School, Aldwych 1936
Front cover: CTRL Stratford Box
Back cover: Amsterdam North-South Line
Foreword
The First Ten Years
Bentley Works
The Twenties
Albert Francois
Sticks and Stones
The Thirties
The Forties
Rupert Neelands
The Fifties
The War Years
The Sixties
Gala Days
The Seventies
Early Travel
The Eighties
The Social Side
The Nineties
The Noughties
Chain of Command
Then... Now...
Contents
5
7
11
13
17
19
21
25
29
33
38
43
49
51
55
59
65
67
71
76
82
3
Foreword
Dunbell Bridge, Ireland
Looking at the origins of Cementation in
the UK and realising that we’d been around
for nearly a century, we decided to mark
the occasion with a brief history, tracing the
threads from the company’s beginnings in the
Yorkshire coalfields to where we are today.
In this endeavour we were fortunate to have
copies of Jack Neelands’ notes on the early
years of the company, and almost all of the
Cementation Quarterlies from 1950 to 1970.
These sources were invaluable in helping to piece together the story
of the growth of Cementation, from the first attempt to use the
cementation process at Thorne Colliery in 1910, to today’s company, a
leading piling and ground engineering contractor in the UK and part
of the Skanska global group.
One of the more difficult aspects when tracing the journey of our
company was following the growth, transformation and eventual
incorporation of the original team into part of a major conglomerate
and with disparate aims and interests, the original company
becoming one among many group companies. The group itself
attracts the spotlight but it is still possible to identify continuity and
recognise our company’s capacity to adapt and change through the
passage of the years.
5
Foreword
5
The First
Ten Years
6One of our earliest contracts
These early years are inextricably linked
with the personal life and fortunes of Albert
Francois, a Belgian who had been working
in England since his twenties. For some years
Albert had been interested in improving,
through the use of pumping, the process of
grouting operations associated with shaft
sinking for coal mining.
In 1910 he secured his first British shaft sinking contract at Thorne
Colliery near Doncaster. Despite Albert’s best efforts, using low
pressure pumps and without chemicals to aid the grouting process, his
attempt was a failure and the contract was cancelled.
Undeterred by this initial failure, Albert was determined to improve
his grouting method. In 1912 he succeeded in patenting his
cementation process of grouting by pump pressure and, buoyed by
this patent and the experience he had gained in the use of silicates,
Albert tendered for, secured and was completely successful in sinking
two shafts at Hatfield Colliery, using his cementation process. In 1914,
with the help of Liege University, he received his patent for using
silicates in conjunction with grouting.
This success marked the breakthrough for Albert and placed him
at the forefront of contemporary shaft sinking specialists. He was
suddenly much in demand and met with a number of influential
figures in the mining world, including important contacts from the
South African goldfields, with whom he started to correspond, selling
on paper his successes and improvements. Over a period of three
years the mining companies in the Transvaal became convinced of the
value of the cementation system.
Whilst the cementation system was receiving approval, the Angelo
The First Ten Years
7
Mine near Johannesburg encountered a huge inflow of water during
mining operations, estimated at 4,500,000 gallons per day. This
inflow of water endangered the workings despite all pumps being
fully commissioned. However, as a temporary measure, the flow was
reduced with the installation of a dam. Albert was consulted and
agreed to visit South Africa.
In February 1917, having arranged shipment of suitable plant, Albert
and two assistants set sail to begin the rescue operation. By September
of that year they had successfully sealed the open water-bearing
fissures. During these months in the Transvaal, Albert did not limit
his work to the Angelo Mine, directing and supervising other works at
various mines, all of which reinforced the reliability and effectiveness
of the cementation process. By the end of 1917 Albert had established
a well-trained and well-equipped workforce in South Africa, capable
of carrying on his patented processes.
Albert did not wish to stay abroad and in December 1917 he returned
to Great Britain. He proposed to the South African Mining Houses
that they buy his patents and with him form a syndicate to carry out
work in the Transvaal, with royalties payable to Albert. The Mining
Houses, whilst very pleased with the results of his work, were not
convinced of Albert’s business acumen, and their Head Offices in
London decided their best course of action was to purchase full
ownership of his patents and form a new company in London.
This proposal was put to Albert and eventually an agreement was
reached. In December 1919 the Francois Cementation Company
Limited was incorporated in the UK, and Albert Francois was
appointed Managing Director. Old company notes show there were
21 foremen employed, which gives an indication of the significant
volume of work being carried out by the company just ten years
after the first unsuccessful attempt to use the cementation process at
Thorne Colliery.
8
The First Ten Years
Piling at Folkestone in the 1920s
Bentley
Works
Above: Bentley Works 1925
Right: Bentley Works 2005
Doncaster has been at the heart of the
company since the early days when the
Yorkshire coalfields were the sole source of
work and income.
The Francois Cementation offices were originally at South Parade,
Doncaster, and in 1922 these were moved to Bentley Works.
Currently the plant yard, offices, fabrication shop and fitting
workshops cover an area of some 7.5 hectares. With a workforce of
210, Bentley Works maintains, repairs, adapts and overhauls all of our
plant and equipment. Our field service team provides a 24 hour, 7 days
a week emergency service.
In addition to manufacturing piling equipment for the company and
for our competitors, we have established a reputation for turning
out high quality light and heavy fabrication for internal and external
customers.
Bentley Works
11
The
Twenties
State-of-the-art tripods
A little over a year after its incorporation the
company was struggling and in need of strong
direction. One of the board members asked his
son-in-law, Rupert Neelands, to look over the
company and report on its prospects.
Rupert Neelands was a Canadian mining engineer in his late thirties,
with considerable experience in mining and surveying.
During the months of April and May in 1921, Rupert visited the
company and produced a report which was forwarded to the board.
The shareholders were impressed by the report and offered Rupert
the opportunity to carry out his own raft of recommendations and
commit his future to that of the company. The offer was accepted on
the basis that he would take “full charge and complete control”. In
October 1921, Rupert arrived in Doncaster to do just that. He was
destined to stay at the head of the company for another forty years.
Albert Francois resigned as Managing Director and returned to
Belgium to look after work there and in France.
From the outset, Rupert was extremely active in building up a circle of
valuable contacts which would be useful over the long term, and this
energy was matched by his determination to get the company into a
sound and viable financial state.
In 1922, the company offices were moved about two miles from
South Parade in Doncaster to Bentley Works, where today the
company continues to maintain the Northern office, Plant Depot and
workshops.
These years were a continual struggle to keep creditors at bay and
maintain sufficient cash-flow to run the business and pay salaries. By
the end of 1922, due to Rupert’s drive, the company was operating
The Twenties
13
on a more professional basis, with experienced engineering and
accounting staff. Despite the stringent financial restrictions and
general depressed business climate of the early 1920s, it was beginning
to return a small profit.
By 1924 a French company had been formed, work was successfully
underway in South Africa and the company had been awarded its first
contract in India.
In 1925 the company started experimental work at St Paul’s Cathedral.
This involved injections of grout into the collapsed rubble masonry
contained within the ashlar columns, as the ashlar was dangerously
close to being overloaded. This work led to a five year contract and
considerably raised the company’s profile.
It was not until 1926 that the second shaft at Thorne Colliery was
completed; sixteen years after work had begun on this epic contract.
This year also marked the first piling contract for the company.
Over the next few years a considerable investment was made in
piling equipment, including the changeover from steam power to
compressed air.
During the late twenties the company expanded its activities to
include consolidation of Thames ballast for London Underground
at various stations, sealing of leakages for reservoirs and dams,
consolidation of ground surrounding sewers, culverts and pipelines
and sealing of water bearing ground for tunnel drives. The company
also carried out an increasing amount of general construction work
including bridge and dam construction, mass concrete foundations
and some general building work. All this work was achieved in a
depressed market suffering from the effects of the General Strike in
1926, and the American Stock market collapse in 1929.
Despite the global depression, the company was profitable. This was
helped by several dam contracts in North Africa, and one or two
exciting possibilities were also appearing on the horizon.
14
The Twenties
Steam power
Albert
Francois
Albert Francois was born in Liege in 1867, the
youngest of a family of four boys. In his teens
he was impressed by newspaper accounts of
the discovery of oil and valuable minerals in
Romania and southern Russia, tempting him
to leave Liege to seek his fortune at these new
frontiers. He wandered around Transylvania,
Georgia and Romania for four years, returning
to Belgium poor but hardened and old for his
years.
His brothers found him a job with a relative who had a partnership
with Messrs Frith, an industrial engineering firm in Sheffield. Thus,
Albert Francois arrived in England in his twenties.
In these early years he developed his engineering skills and travelled
frequently between the continent and Sheffield. For a period he
returned to Liege where he established Les Ateliers Francois, a
successful firm which manufactured hammer drills and compressed
air machinery, including the then famous 80mm Francois hammer
drill.
Throughout this time he was interested in the process of grouting
or cementation for colliery work, and carried out two contracts in
collieries in France and Belgium, based on the already established
method of pouring grout using gravity pressure, but also using pumps
to deliver the grout under pressure where needed.
In 1910 Albert secured his first grouting contract in Great Britain
at Thorne Colliery. Although this first contract was unsuccessful,
he persisted and was successful in obtaining his cementation patent
Albert Francois
17
for grouting using pump pressure in 1912, followed by the patent on
using silicates in conjunction with grout injection in 1914.
Successful contracts followed, placing Francois firmly in the spotlight
of the mining world, whose owners, agents and engineers were
constantly on the lookout for increased safety, reliability and speed in
the sinking of shafts through water-bearing measures.
In turn this led on to his successful visit to South Africa in 1917,
sealing off the leaks in the Angelo Mine in the East Rand, and leaving
behind a trained and well-equipped crew on his return to Great
Britain.
The Mining Houses wanted to take full ownership of the patents
and the future business. After lengthy discussions between Francois
and the Mining Houses, the Francois Cementation Company was
incorporated in December 1919, with Albert Francois as Managing
Director.
A little over a year after its incorporation, the company was virtually
bankrupt and the Board employed Rupert Neelands to assess the
company’s prospects. This was the beginning of the end of Albert’s
involvement with Cementation. In 1921 Rupert Neelands was
appointed Managing Director and Albert returned to Belgium to
look after work there and in France, eventually resigning from the
company in 1922.
Albert Francois died in Liege in 1937.
18
Albert Francois
Sticks and
Stones
Over the years we’ve been called many odd names, which we collected
and recorded in the Cementation Quarterlies. In the early days
when the company was Francois Cementation, there was no attempt
at fancy continental pronunciation. We were known locally as the
Frankoys - good at shaft sinking. We played on this renown by saying
“If you’ve got that sinking feeling, don’t bother with the doctor,
consult Cementation.”
Changing the name to The Cementation Company didn’t really help.
This is the sort of thing we’ve had to get used to:
The Cement and Bacon Company
The Cremation Company
The Sanitation Company
The Dementation Company
The Cement Station Company
Demonstration Ltd
Simmon Tate and Company
The Condemitation Company
The Connotation Company
The Sea Mantation Company
The Comemitation Company
The Concentration Contractor
Mr E.C.Mentation
and Bentley once featured as the Cementation Penalty Works.
Sticks and Stones
19
The Thirties
Setting out, 30’s style
Through good client connections in 1930, the
company secured a major contract for the
Haweswater Aqueduct, taking water from
Lake Haweswater to Manchester. This contract
was the largest and most complex contract so
far undertaken by the company, encompassing
some five miles of tunnel and four miles of
cut and cover. The contract was to last three
years, and was completed on-time and with a
modest profit, establishing the company as a
major player in the civils construction sector.
By now there was a company presence in Spain, Italy, France, South
Africa and India. In addition, the company was spreading out of
the familiar shaft sinking and civil engineering contracts and now
operated under licence, the Betonac process which was a surface
hardening material, using a separate company registered as Granitese.
The Sika-Francois company employed a range of concrete admixtures
to aid joint sealing, and in 1932 the Contracts Materials Company
was set up to include trading in the operation of steel scaffolding
(Bettascaf). In 1933 the company attempted a speculative building
venture at Chingford, which was singularly unsuccessful, and this
sorry experience was enough to put the company off such work until
well after the war. In 1936 the company entered into an agreement to
exclusively provide the Muffelite process, used in aircraft to isolate
vibration.
By 1936, heightening tension in Europe and the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War in July led to the company back-pedalling on its ties
with Germany, Italy and Spain. At this time an important contract was
awarded by the War Office for some slope shafts in Wiltshire.
The Thirties
21
Pre-war Gala Day at Bentley
The successful execution of this contract resulted in the company
being asked to become unofficial consultant to the War Office. In
turn, this was to lead to major work for the War Office during the
forthcoming years of hostilities.
At the close of the decade, in a timely new departure, the company
carried out the successful extinguishing of an underground fire in
Cardiff by the injection of a mix of limestone dust and sand. This
became an important activity during the war as the glow of tip fires
was considered a navigational aid to enemy aircraft on night bombing
raids.
As the new decade approached, the company prepared for the coming
war: men were trained in demolition and rescue; Air Raid Precautions
and First Aid Teams were formed; stocks of materials were increased
and air raid trenches, covered with concrete rafts as proof against
light bombs, were constructed large enough to house all of the staff.
The many contracts in preparation for the coming conflict helped to
increase the yearly turnover to a record £800,000.
The Thirties
23
Plant repair shop during World War II
The Forties
Cliff Quay, Ipswich 1944
The majority of work in Great Britain during
the war years was for the War Office, the
Admiralty, Air Ministry, Ministry of Works
and Ministry of Supply. Whilst shortages of
plant and materials had been anticipated and
planned for, the increasing volume of work as
the war progressed proved difficult to service
as skilled labour, already in short supply,
became even more scarce.
Spurred on by the ever increasing work for the various War
Departments in 1941, the company name was changed to The
Cementation Company Limited, represented by an all-British Board.
In 1942 the Sika-Francois company was renamed Quickset Water
Sealers Limited.
The volume of work expanded quickly during these war years, with
high value Muffelite work for aircraft, a major contract to extinguish
an extensive underground fire and subsequent consolidation of the
area. This involved over 100 kilometres of drilling plus injection
of 55,000 cubic metres of material, together with an intensive high
volume programme of percussive boring to prospect for coal seams
in order to plan and co-ordinate opencast coal production. A very
successful use to which the company put the new Colcrete grout
mixers (provided under an agreement with John Gammon) was
repairing aircraft runways due to overuse and bomb damage. These
novel applications continued throughout the war years in conjunction
with several traditional projects in Ireland.
New offices at Bentley Works were completed and an additional 10
acres of land adjacent to the plant yard were purchased with an eye
to the future, although in accordance with wartime requirements,
The Forties
25
Piling at Finchley
The Fitters’ bench
the land was planted and farmed for wheat. Notwithstanding the
hostilities, the company acquired John Thom – deep drillers and
Thermacoust – manufacturer of woodwool and cement insulation
slabs.
The immediate post-war years were marked by the nationalisation
of the coal industry in January 1947, bomb damage repair work on
housing in South London, demolition work for the Defence Ministry
and the re-establishment of ties with South Africa, France and Spain,
as well as branching out into other countries.
The decade drew to a close with a record annual turnover of just
under £4 million, delivering a record £404,000 profit before tax.
In 1949 The Cementation Company (Canada) was incorporated.
Work spread globally with contracts in the UK, Republic of Ireland,
Rhodesia, Tasmania, India, Turkey, Pakistan, Italy, Spain, Portugal,
the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Venezuela, France, Algeria, Tunisia and
Morocco. In 1949, the first long service awards were held, and Fred
Gee was the longest serving member with 38 years service.
The picture opposite shows Arthur Asbridge, Shop Foreman, outside
his office. Charge hand fitter, Tom Perkins, stands arms akimbo.
Nearest the camera is T. Granger and next to him is Joe Reed and the
fourth man is R. Vinters.
The Forties
27
Rupert
Neelands
Rupert Neelands was born in Canada in 1881,
and obtained an arts degree from Manitoba
University before attending Toronto University
and qualifying as a mining engineer.
After a spell spent prospecting in the copper fields of British
Columbia, Rupert served with the Canadian Engineers during the
First World War, attaining the rank of Major. He was mentioned in
despatches, won the Military Cross and received an injury to his
forehead.
After the war, Rupert spent some time in London, where he met, fell
in love with and in 1919 married Kathleen Agnew, the daughter of
John Agnew, a director of Consolidated Goldfields in South Africa.
A year later John Agnew was appointed to the board of the Francois
Cementation Company in Doncaster, and being unhappy with the
state of the company he asked his new son-in-law to investigate and
report on its prospects.
Over a period of weeks Rupert visited the company and produced a
report for the shareholders. The report was well received and Rupert
was offered the opportunity to implement his own recommendations.
This offer was accepted and Rupert took charge of Cementation in
October 1921.
From his earliest days at the helm Rupert was instrumental in
establishing a network of contacts and promoting the company, ever
active in seeking new opportunities, combining determination with
real entrepreneurial flair.
Despite the prevailing grim economic climate, within two years
his efforts had turned the company around and a small profit was
realised. From then on the company expanded, geographically and
Rupert Neelands
29
Early photograph of Bentley Works
financially, driven by the energy and vision of Rupert Neelands.
He remained Managing Director until 1953 when he became
Chairman. In 1961, on reaching the age of eighty he stood down as
Chairman, becoming President and Chief Consultant. Ten years later
at the age of ninety, Rupert Neelands passed away, having witnessed
the transformation of Cementation from a small struggling company
into a global business, recently acquired as part of the Trafalgar House
group.
31
Rupert Neelands
31
The Fifties
Drilling on Constitution Hill
The 1950s saw rapid expansion of the
company with the establishment of
offices around the globe. In June 1950 the
Cementation Company (Ireland) Limited was
incorporated in Dublin. An American company
was registered as a subsidiary of the Canadian
company in 1951. A New Zealand company
was established in 1955,followed by The
Cementation Company Rhodesia in 1956.
In 1950 the first Cementation Quarterly was published, and these
magazines were to continue for another twenty years, registering the
business and social activities of the company as it grew and diversified.
In 1952, for the first time since 1939, the Cementation Gala Day was
re-introduced at Doncaster. These events proved immensely popular
with the staff and their families, peaking at an attendance of more than
one thousand participants and spectators.
With the increased workload, plans were put in place to double
the floor capacity of the workshops at Bentley and this work was
carried out between 1954 and 1956, trebling output. Although the
company had maintained an office in London since the mid-thirties,
the increased workload and widening range of business activities
prompted a move to a new office building at Albert Embankment in
1956, with the company occupying four floors, effectively relocating
the Head Office to the capital.
In 1953 Rupert Neelands resigned as Managing Director and was
appointed Chairman, ending his 32 year tenure of managing the day
to day running of the company, during which time he had helped to
place it firmly on the global construction stage.
The Fifties
33
33
Bucklersbury House tripod piling
The 100,000 tons silo dwarfs the two figures
During this decade the projects grew in size and complexity. Work
started in 1952 on the Kariba Dam Power project on the Zambezi
river, and was to continue there without break for a further ten
years. In 1953 the company was awarded the grouting for the Dokan
Dam in Iraq, and in association with Patel Engineering of Bombay,
the £20 million Civil Engineering contract was secured for the new
iron and steel works to be built at Durgapur.
Many innovations occurred during these years including the
increasing use of mechanical auger rigs in the UK and Ireland, the
purchase of the Vibrofounds company from Taylor Woodrow which
was to spark the development of the considerable vibroflotation
work in the years to come, the first venture into diaphragm walling,
the development of a prototype jet grouting tool and improvements
in the systems of chemical consolidation.
In addition to the various specialist companies, the piling and
ground engineering sector had increased in importance, overtaking
the original cementation section of the company, both in terms
of turnover and profit. Work for the National Coal Board was
shrinking and general civil engineering work had become the
mainstay of the company. At the same time we were tentatively
testing the building market with the construction of a military
hospital in Cyprus and the construction of a parabolic concrete
sugar silo in Liverpool. This building was designed and constructed
by Cementation, with a capacity of 100,000 tons of bulk sugar.
When completed in 1956, this silo was the largest in the northern
hemisphere and the second largest such structure in the world,
measuring 165 metres by 51 metres with a height of 26 metres.
In 1958 Cementation acquired the Demolition and Construction
Company, a well established company with an excellent reputation
in completing successful commercial projects. They had experience
in the industrial, education, retail and leisure sectors, which
signalled further expansion into the commercial construction field
for us.
The Fifties
35
A prime example of the company’s engineering skills was seen at
the opening of the Pahlavi Bridge by the Shah of Iran in the spring
of 1960. This bridge, linking the island of Abadan to the port of
Khorramshahr, was awarded on a ‘design and construct’ basis to
Cementation in February 1958. Work was commenced in September
1958 and completed eight months ahead of schedule in January 1960.
As the fifties ended, Cementation had achieved a turnover of
£24 million per annum, and was well established with more than
fifty active branches and subsidiaries in seventeen countries spread
throughout the world including Canada, the United States, India,
Brazil, South Africa and New Zealand.
With the approach of the sixties, we can see in Cementation the
embryonic shape of the modern international conglomerate it was to
become.
36
The Fifties
Liberty Hall in Dublin
Drilling on Horse Guards parade
The War
Years
The story of Cementation encompasses two
World Wars.
The details of the early days are sketchy, but we know that Georges
Damry from Liege was Chief Engineer of the company, based in
Yorkshire at the outbreak of The Great War in 1914. He promptly
volunteered and was sent to the front in Belgium as a despatch
rider. Following the fall of Liege he escaped to England but quickly
returned to the continent to join the Belgian Army and fight in the
trenches for the remainder of the war. He was awarded the Belgian
Croix de Guerre. On returning to England after the war, he resumed
his employment at Cementation in Doncaster as Chief Engineer
and Works Manager. When the French subsidiary was set up in 1921
the Chief Engineer was Rene Scalliet and his Assistant Engineer
was Henri Van Massenhove. Both were Belgian and both had been
decorated for their valour during the war with the Belgian Croix de
Guerre, completing an admirable hat-trick. Fred Gee, who had joined
the company in 1911, spent his war in the Lens and Malmedy regions,
reclaiming mines which had been put out of action.
In the early years of the Second World war we were experiencing
a definite coldness in our dealings with the Admiralty, as it was
perceived that the company had strong French connections because
of the “Francois” in the title and the presence of a Belgian and a
Frenchman on the Board of Directors. This was particularly relevant
38
The War Years
Cementation Roll of Honour 1939-1945
39
as the French Navy was prohibited by the Vichy government from
helping the Allies. The company name was duly changed to The
Cementation Company Limited with a new all-British Board of
Directors. The name of subsidiary company Sika-Francois was also
changed to Quickset Water Sealers.
Work during the Second World War was carried out for the
Government, centred around the war effort. The work was varied
and Cementation successfully adapted many of the existing company
processes to achieve new ends.
The majority of work carried out for the Ministry of Supply was an
intensive prospecting programme of drilling, over an area of some
7,000 square miles, to identify, plan and co-ordinate the development
of suitable opencast coal mines. The company convinced the Ministry
of the benefits of using percussive techniques for this work, a method
faster and cheaper than traditional core boring. In excess of 50 drilling
rigs were deployed in this work, needing a considerable increase in
clerical staff and drillers. In order to cope with the demand for skilled
operatives the company set up a training scheme for drill crews,
probably one of the first training schemes in the industry.
The airfield runways in Great Britain were beginning to fail during
the war due to bomb damage and more prosaically, to excessive wear
and tear caused by the constant use of the more modern planes.
The company was called in to strengthen the runways using the
cementation process, and we tailored a system using the new Colcrete
grout mixers. This proved an instant success, and in the first year of
operation approximately 3,000,000 square metres of runway at fifteen
airfields had been treated for the Air Ministry. This work continued
throughout the war, with work being carried out on as many as
thirteen aerodromes concurrently.
In 1937 Cementation obtained a unique process which enabled
the welding of ferrous and non-ferrous metals at low temperature.
40
The War Years
During the war this patented Gussolite process proved to be a
considerable benefit to the Forces, in particular the Navy, with repairs
of engine parts, propellers, etc. Another of the company’s specialist
developments which found favour with the war effort was Nofrango,
a process of coating or impregnating a rough material such as hessian
with cementitious material. This was used in the construction of
hangars, huts and blast walls on air stations.
Immediately prior to the war, Cementation were called in to quench
a huge underground fire at the steel works in Cardiff using their
patented process of lime injection. Extinguishing the night-time glow
of underground tip fires grew in importance during the war years,
and became a large part of the company’s activities.
Throughout the war a large part of the workshops at Bentley was given
over to the manufacture of three inch mortar bombs.
World War II three inch mortar bomb
41
The Sixties
New offices at Maple Cross 1961
42
The sixties began badly with a severe
curtailment in National Coal Board work
which, together with a disastrous contract in
Brazil, impacted directly on Cementation’s
growth and profits. During this dark period,
on reaching the age of 80 in 1961, Rupert
Neelands resigned as Chairman and was
appointed President and Chief Consultant.
Sir Frederick Pile was elected Chairman in his
stead.
These early years of the sixties involved drastic trimming of overheads
and disposal of trade investments and underperforming subsidiaries.
A full rationalisation of the company was undertaken, with general
belt tightening and an extremely selective tendering policy. After
more than a year of consolidation the position improved, and by 1964
there was once again a healthy order book and the company was back
in profit.
In 1963 we completed the Ffestiniog Pumping station, bringing to an
end twenty-six years of continuous work on hydro-electricity schemes
in Great Britain and Ireland, since the first contract for the Liffey
hydro-electricity scheme in Ireland was started in 1937.
Despite the severe cutbacks in work for the National Coal Board, the
company expanded and changed in several directions during these
years. In 1961 the offices at Rickmansworth were built and the Piling
Division was re-located there from the day they opened. In 1966 the
company built and moved into a new head office block in Mitcham,
on the site of Demolition and Construction’s Depot.
The Sixties
43
Large diameter piling in Sheffield
The company was busy on the acquisition trail and in 1963 secured
Tube Headings Limited, followed in 1967 by the purchase of the
Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company. This was a significant
move reflecting the desire to replace the disappearing hydroelectric work with a share of the roads and bridges sector. Other
acquisitions included Mortimer Gall, an electrical engineering
contractor, and in 1969 earthmoving contractors Dick Hampton
joined the fold followed by McKinney Foundations, just before
the end of the decade. This last purchase strengthened the Piling
Division which had grown rapidly in the sixties with the increase in
large diameter piling due to the proliferation of multi-storey office
blocks.
In 1963 the Federation of Piling Specialists was formed with
Cementation as one of the founder members. This decade saw the
introduction by Cementation of the jet grouting technique on a
project in Pakistan in 1962, and in the mid-sixties the company
pioneered the use of bentonite drilling fluid for deep piles in water
bearing strata. In South Africa a new depth record of 16 metres was
achieved for the vibroflotation process.
During 1968 Cementation was instrumental in saving the West
Driefontein mine from flooding. This was South Africa’s richest
gold mine and it experienced an inflow of about 100 million gallons
of water per day for a period of a month. Desperate efforts were
made to increase pumping capacity and to channel the water into
the pumping stations of other mines, but these attempts were
unsuccessful.The water was steadily gaining and there appeared
little chance of beating it until Cementation came up with a scheme
of plugs and diversions, which entailed working round the clock,
but which did the trick and saved the mine. Saving the mine was
hailed by the South African Minister of Mines as one of the two
great achievements of the time in South Africa, the other being the
first ever heart transplant operation carried out by Dr Christiaan
Barnard at the Groote Shuur Hospital in Cape Town at the end of
1967.
The Sixties
45
As the decade ended Cementation was in good shape, we were
profitable and internationally known, with ambitious plans to
diversify and grow. By now the annual turnover was approaching £50
million and the company employed some nine thousand people.
46
The Sixties
Platform piling at Wembley Central Station
Gala Days
The Cementation Francois Gala Days were
popular and well attended events in Doncaster
in the pre-war years. The first Gala Day was
held in 1930 and they continued annually until
1939. These events were attended by three to
four hundred people each year until war put a
stop to the celebrations.
It was not until remaining wartime restrictions on travel, rationing,
etc were sufficiently relaxed in 1952 that the Cementation Gala Day
was re-introduced. The format of the day was extended beyond the
pre-war template to include not just the Bentley Works personnel and
their families, but staff and contract personnel from area offices were
welcome to attend and enter for the events, with the strict proviso that
any Trophy would only be awarded to a Bentley Works employee.
Around a thousand people attended on Saturday 28th June 1952 and
enjoyed a full programme from nine in the morning until God Save
the Queen ended proceedings at seven in the evening. Events included
track and field competitions for young and old, tug of war, fun events,
etc all serviced by outside caterers providing lunch in the canteen, a
marquee for buffet teas and a beer tent.
The Gala Days thrived through the fifties and grew in scope to
incorporate the long service awards, a Miss Cementation contest
(with twenty six entrants in 1959!), sideshows and entertainment,
followed by a dance in the evening.
Due to company growth and the increase in personnel, the Gala
Day became unwieldy and unfashionable and so lost its popularity.
The first annual dinner for Long Service awards was held in 1960,
signalling the move away from the Gala Day as a yearly company
focus.
Gala Days
49
The
Seventies
Installing ground anchors through our diaphragm wall at Victoria Street
The new decade was only two weeks old when
the national press reported that a number
of companies were competing to take over
Cementation, placing it in the uncomfortable
and unusual position of being the corporate
prey. By March 1970 it became clear that
Cementation was to become part of the
Trafalgar House Group.
This acquisition prompted the break-up of the various Cementation
sectors, which were absorbed into the group. With the exception
of general building, which was taken under the Trollope and Colls
wing, there were not many areas of overlap with the specialist
skills which existed in Cementation. Mining, piling and ground
engineering became the backbone of the Specialist Engineering
Division and Cementation Construction, Cleveland Bridge and Dick
Hampton Earth Moving formed the Civils Division. From being an
autonomous entity, Cementation was learning what it meant to be
part of a large and diverse group of over twenty thousand employees,
with the constraints that accompany such a conglomerate.
The new owner was a dynamic, fast growing business with a voracious
appetite for acquisitions. The main focus of the group in the early
seventies was construction, but this was soon to become blurred as
diverse global growth became the new order.
In 1971 Fred Gee celebrated 60 years continuous service since joining
Albert Francois in Doncaster in March 1911. Later that same year,
Rupert Neelands died at the grand age of ninety, having seen the
company he had shaped and managed through the early part of
the century, transformed in the last few years into a major global
enterprise, helped by the industrial muscle of the new owners.
The Seventies
51
Bird’s eye view of Oxford Street piling 1972
During this decade Cementation carried out the usual diverse
programme of piling and ground engineering throughout the
world, having been bolstered by the purchase in 1970 of the John
Gill Company. Contracts ranged from sandwicks in Goa, underreamed piles in London for new office blocks and adjacent to
the new Victoria Line, diaphragm walls in Calcutta for the new
Metro, large diameter piles in Bahrain, dynamic consolidation in
the London Docks and deep drilling for water in North Africa,
for copper ore in Iran and Zambia, phosphates in Jordan, coal in
Australia and Egypt and nickel deposits in the Dominican Republic.
At the end of the seventies, the Trafalgar Group was unrecognisable
from the company that had bought Cementation ten years
earlier. From being a construction focussed global group, the
eighties welcomed in a sprawling conglomerate with far-reaching
interests in leisure, media, air freight and oil and gas, backed up
by a successful construction empire. The group turnover was
approaching £1 billion per year and the workforce numbered forty
thousand employees worldwide.
The Seventies
53
53
Early Travel
One of the most striking aspects of the growth
of the company over the years is the serious
amount of international travel undertaken as a
necessary adjunct to this global growth.
From the early days just after the First World War when Albert
Francois travelled to South Africa by sea, the company was always
ready to cross the world in search of work and opportunity.
A snapshot of travel undertaken over the winter months in 1953
shows an impressive list of different places visited, comprising Algiers,
Baghdad, Barcelona, Beirut, Belfast, Bombay, Brussels, Capetown,
Carthagena, Casablanca, Cork, Dublin, Edmonton, Granada,
Istanbul, Israel, Johannesburg, Karachi, Kuwait, Londonderry,
Madrid, Malaya, Marseilles, Montreal, Nicosia, Omagh, Paris, Rome,
Stuttgart, Tangier, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Zonguldak in
Turkey.
The company’s offices from this period are listed as Dublin-MadridMilan-Paris-Lisbon-Ankara-Dunedin-Karachi-JohannesburgSalisbury-Toronto-Montreal-Vancouver-Calcutta-BombayColombo-Baghdad-Nicosia-Ontario-Delaware-Calgary-CasablancaRome.
The attraction of international travel is somewhat lessened when the
realities of post-war travel are laid bare. An article in the Cementation
magazine for 1950 gives an account of a business journey in 1949
from London to Luanda in Angola. The journey begins at nine o’clock
on a crisp autumn Monday morning in London, checking in for a
flight on a Panair do Brasil DC4, which takes off at 10.30am, stopping
at Orly in Paris before eventually touching down in Lisbon at 5pm
that day. The night is spent in Lisbon and the next morning it’s back
to the airport for the next leg of the journey. Unfortunately, the PanAmerican Clipper is slightly delayed due to technical problems and
Early Travel
55
55
takes off at lunchtime, arriving in Dakar at 9pm in the evening where
the aircraft is refuelled and passengers are able to stretch their legs.
Next stop is Monrovia at about 1am for an hour before continuing to
Accra, through a tropical storm, landing with the breaking dawn at
5.30 am, where a very welcome breakfast is enjoyed. After breakfast,
with a new crew on board, the Clipper resumes its journey landing at
Leopoldville at lunchtime, where taxis take passengers to the hotel for
a well earned bath and sleep. The next morning at 10am the journey
continues in a DC3 which finally lands at midday on Thursday in
Luanda.
The top picture opposite shows the ferry in use before Cementation
constructed the Pahlavi Foundation Bridge at Khorramshahr in
Southern Iran, spanning the river Karun and linking the island of
Abadan with the port of Khorramshahr.
The bottom picture is a general view of the Pahlavi Bridge during the
opening ceremony.
56
Early Travel
Boarding the ferry
A view of the Pahlavi Bridge
The
Eighties
First underwater wick drains at Alexandra Dock in Grimsby
The group annual turnover exceeded £1
billion for the first time in 1980, with more
than half of this coming from the traditional
construction base.
A year later Cementation International received a Queen’s Award
for Export, reflecting continuous and increasing overseas earnings
during the previous three years. In this year the group strengthened
and broadened its piling operations with the acquisition of Frankipile
UK and their overseas assets.
During the Falklands conflict in 1982, four Cunard ships were
requisitioned to back up the British Task force in the South Atlantic.
The QE2 carried back the 629 survivors of three ships lost off of
the Falklands – HMS Coventry, the Ardent and the Antelope. The
Saxonia, a refrigerated cargo ship, was requisitioned along with two
conveyor ships, Atlantic Causeway and Atlantic Conveyor, which
carried Harrier jets and helicopters to the war zone. Disaster struck in
May 1982 when an Exocet missile hit the Atlantic Conveyor, causing
an intense fire which burned the ship out and resulted in the death of
twelve men, six of whom were Cunard men, including the Captain.
Throughout the eighties the group grew and prospered, taking into
the fold such companies as Redpath Dorman Long, the Scott Lithgow
yard in Scotland, and a 50% stake in Gammon in Hong Kong which
further strengthened the group’s foundations expertise, and Comben
Homes, doubling house-building activities. In 1986 John Brown
became part of the group, marking its presence as a leading force in
the fields of process and chemical plants, power stations and the oil
and gas industries.
In October 1986 a very successful Cementation Innovation Day was
held at Brooklands, where leading figures in the geotechnical industry
The Eighties
59
Above: First pile for QE2 bridge - Dartford Crossing
Right: Dartford Crossing during construction
were brought up-to-date with the latest developments in piling and
ground engineering. The following year saw the construction of
what was then the deepest car park in London with fourteen levels of
underground parking at Aldersgate. This work was the subject of a
special feature in the Innovation section of the Sunday Times.
At the end of the decade the company was awarded the contract to
build the third Thames Crossing, which was to be the successful and
iconic Queen Elizabeth II Bridge at Dartford.
The decade closed with the group occupying a premier position in UK
construction, with a construction turnover in excess of £1.5 billion, of
which more than half was UK based.
The Eighties
61
61
Toyota factory
En-route from Canary Wharf
Submarine ship lift at Barrow
24 hour working at Barrow
Mr P. Hardy, second from left, and Mr H. Clayton, third from right.
The Social
Side
Winners of the Bentley Hospital Cup in 1951
During the years there has been plenty of
hard work, but some play as well. In fact,
when we look back, play seems to have taken
up quite a large proportion of our time!
We were a sporty crowd with, at various times and locations,
a cricket team, a football team, a rugby team, a hockey team, a
badminton club, a squash league, a golf society and a tennis club,
not to mention the Gala Days with the tug of war and track and field
events.
In 1949 the Cementation Golfing Society was formed and has
continued, in various guises, to the present day, although now
there are two discrete societies, Doncaster and Maple Cross. The
Cementation Golfing Society at Doncaster still holds the Clayton
Cup and the Hardy Trophy (see top left picture), first played for in
July 1949. The Cementation House Golf Society, based at Maple
Cross, has been going in its present form since 1978.
The Doncaster Welfare Association thrived in the fifties and sixties
with an annual dinner dance, an annual children’s party, a Twenty
Club which included a car treasure hunt, an indoor competition
night and various outings during the year, which included
organising the Miss Cementation contest after the demise of the
Gala Days at the end of the fifties.
The Maple Cross Sports and Social Club organised swimming,
cricket, tennis as well as sailing on the Thames in the club dinghy.
Most of the outside matches were with our clients, who had similar
in-house teams, but the most competitive matches seemed to be
between Doncaster and Maple Cross, inevitably followed by further
competitive sessions at the counters of well stocked bars, before the
travelling team was whisked off in the team coach.
65
The Social Side
65
The Nineties
A12/M11 Bored pile wall
The eighties ended on the crest of a wave
with record workloads, but this boom was
closely followed by the inevitable bust. High
interest rates together with reduced demand
for commercial space and falling house prices
combined to ensure the UK experienced a deep
and painful recession in the early nineties.
Despite these travails, in 1991 the Davy Corporation, an international
heavy engineering and construction company, was acquired forming
one of the biggest engineering and contracting entities in the world.
Three years later the group bought the bomb-damaged Baltic
Exchange building that was to become the site of the Foster designed
Swiss Re offices, which we would construct in the new millennium.
After the boom years of the late eighties the group, in common with
the majority of British industrial companies, was reporting heavy
losses. Between 1992 and 1993 Jardine Matheson, using their Hong
Kong Land subsidiary, acquired 26% of the shares in Trafalgar House
and attempted to turn the company around, but without success. In
1995 the losses amounted to £321 million, taking the accumulated
losses in the first half of this decade to a figure approaching £1 billion.
Rescue came to the ailing group in the form of Kvaerner ASA, a
Norwegian shipbuilding and engineering group which had been
unsuccessful in its bid for Amec in 1995. In April 1996, Kvaerner paid
£904 million to acquire The Trafalgar Group. This new conglomerate
had a turnover approaching $10 billion, with a workforce of fifty eight
thousand employees.
After the slump in the early nineties the foundations business
refocussed. With the Gammon partnership in Hong Kong, the
The Nineties
67
Above: Ground anchors at Rosyth Dockyard
Right: Aerial view of Braehead Retail Park
Cemindia connection and work in the Middle East, activity increased
towards the end of the decade. Deep basement award winning work
at the famous Harrods store in Knightsbridge, foundations for major
shopping centres at Bluewater and Braehead, and an increasing
amount of work on the London Underground, together with the first
of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link projects at Ashford, painted a healthy
picture as the millennium approached. During this decade, David
Greenwood, in 1993, and Ken Fleming, in 1999, were honoured by the
British Geotechnical Society when awarded the prestigious Skempton
Medal. In 2000 we held the inaugural Fleming Award to mark Ken
Fleming’s lifetime contribution to excellence in geotechnical design
and construction.
These years were fairly difficult, learning to live in a wide-ranging
group where construction was significantly less important than other
company sectors. The rapid global expansion of the parent company
had stretched resources and finances, and this engendered a feeling of
uncertainty and apprehension as the new millennium approached.
The Nineties
69
The
Noughties
In the dock
We were still in the first year of the new
century when the news broke that we were
destined to become part of the fast growing
Skanska Group, a global construction firm with
ambitions to be a world leader. Having a new
parent with its heart firmly set on construction
did wonders for morale and boosted the
workforce. Coping with new branding,
understanding and assimilating corporate
and cultural differences, whilst maintaining
the company’s position in the market, ensured
the first years of the new millennium were
moderately busy.
These years witnessed a considerable amount of complex and
challenging work on various major infrastructure works, such as
CTRL and JLE. These projects were bolstered by a significant increase
in the amount of PFI projects in the health, education and custodial
sectors.
In the autumn of 2003 the company moved from the sixties-built
Maple Cross offices, which had served as the company’s headquarters
for some forty years. It was not a dramatic upheaval, moving into a
modern, purpose-built, air-conditioned office block, situated next
door to the original offices which were soon demolished to make way
for houses.
As part of the Skanska global strategy of being Number One in your
home market, we were obliged to sever our ties in the Far East with
Gammon and break our long-standing connections with Cemindia
The Noughties
71
Large diameter piling near St Paul’s Cathedral
on the Asian sub Continent. Our consolation for these losses were the
establishment of new family links with the United States, Scandanavia
and Central Europe, through the formation of the Skanska
Foundation Group.
The commercial boom in the early years of the century, coupled with
work on the Amsterdam Metro, kept the workforce fully occupied.
During these years the company was involved with many high-profile
projects in the City of London including Swiss Re, Barts and The
London, Heron Tower and Walbrook, all as part of the One Skanska
team. In the retail sector we were busy with White City, St David’s in
Cardiff and One New Change. Infrastructure work included the M1
and M25 widening. Our Ground Engineering business expanded
rapidly with massive grouting projects in Scotland, major ground
anchors and minipiling work in the UK and Ireland, supplemented by
our work in rail embankment stabilisation.
We received numerous awards during these years for projects
including Harrods, Moorhouse and Bankside; for Health and Safety,
reflecting the change in cultural attitude to safety which resulted from
our Incident and Injury Free initiative, and for the best Foundations
and Ground Engineering company including a couple of Best of the
Best accolades.
As always, the company was looking for ways to improve its
products and services. Geothermal Energy Piles® were a significant
introduction to the UK market, and as we near our centenary the
Energy Piles® already installed by us in the last few years are showing
an annual saving in CO2 approaching 4,000 tonnes. Our work in
pile re-use and smart pile instrumentation establishes a platform for
further research and increased whole life value.
From the early days in the Doncaster coalfields, the company has
consistently, throughout its one hundred years, striven for quality
and innovation. Looking back over these years, the peaks and troughs
The Noughties
73
of good and bad times are very evident, but so far the company has
always come through. Perversely, it sometimes seemed as if hard times
helped the company to progress and strengthen, as happened during
the depressed thirties, through the war years and the recessions of the
eighties and nineties. The first decade of the new century is at an end,
the world finance system has been sorely tested in the last two years
and countries, not just companies, have had to dig deep to find the
mettle needed for survival. We too have felt the pain of this turmoil,
but we are resilient, our workforce is dedicated to continuing our
culture of engineering excellence and high value, and these qualities
combined with the backing of our powerful Skanska parent, enables
us to look forward with confidence.
Our history also helps us to face the future.
74
The Noughties
Front row props
Chain of
Command
It is an honour to be in the position of Managing Director as the
company approaches its centenary.
An outstanding feature of Cementation’s past has been the manifest
level of excellence in design, coupled with a history of innovative
solutions, all leading to the successful delivery of some of the most
complex and challenging foundation projects undertaken in these
islands in the last century. I will continue this tradition of innovation
and engineering excellence into the future.
Looking back at some of the early photographs, it is striking to note
the advances we have made in terms of personal safety, workplace
welfare, corporate responsibility and environmental awareness.
Our Incident and Injury Free initiative, now in its fifth year, has
enabled us to begin to change our culture on safety. We will continue
this campaign to ensure our workforce returns home safely each day.
As part of the Skanska family we have embraced the 1:3:5 building
blocks which shape the strategy for the future – the One Skanska, the
Three Sins (wrong people, wrong place and wrong customer) and the
Five Zeros (zero loss-making projects, zero environmental incidents,
zero accidents, zero ethical breaches and zero defects).
Skanska has a history longer than ours, and this shared ability to
survive the roller coaster ride that has been business in the Twentieth
and early Twenty First Century enables us to look forward with
confidence to the future.
76
The first Managing Director was Albert
Francois, appointed in 1919 when the
company was incorporated, some nine years
after Albert first started work at Thorne
Colliery. In 1921 Rupert Neelands took over
and held the reins for thirty two years.
During Rupert’s term as Managing Director, the piling section of
the company had grown in importance, to the extent that in 1949
Len Riches was appointed Director with responsibility for piling,
reporting to W. A. Pickersgill, Managing Director of the newly
formed Cementation (Contracts) Limited, which was set up to
strengthen the management of the fast-expanding sectors of the
company.
In 1957, following Len Riches’ promotion, C. (Nick) Young was
installed in his place, reporting to Cecil Grundy, recently appointed
Managing Director of Cementation (Contracts).
In 1967 Vincent Grundy, Cecil Grundy’s son, replaced Nick Young
as Managing Director of Cementation Piling and continued in this
position, through the takeover by Trafalgar House, until appointed
Chairman in 1973, handing over the Managing Director’s role to
Jim Carlile. Peter Thornton was appointed as Managing Director in
1983 following Jim Carlile’s promotion.
John Oldham took over from Peter Thornton in 1986. Two years
later John Oldham took up the position of Chairman and Trevor
Philpot was appointed Managing Director. Trevor Philpot remained
Managing Director until his retirement in 1996, handing over to
Mike Putnam. In turn, Mike Putnam was followed by Robin Wood
in 2002 and in 2008 Martin Pedley, the current Managing Director,
was appointed.
Chain of Command
77
Teamwork 2008
Diaphragm wall at Kings Place 2005
Plunge columns at One New Change 2009
IIF Award for Quadrant 3 team 2009
Bottoming-out at Kings Cross Shared Service Yard 2009
M25 widening 2009
81
Then ...
It was 1898 and blasting was started for the Skråmforsen hydropower plant on the Svart River, west of Örebro in central Sweden.
The power plant was constructed for Örebro Elektriska AB, which
was the country’s first company to deliver hydroelectric power to
the public.
The power plant started up in 1900. In the following decades,
Skanska, or Skånska Cementgjuteriet as the company was then
named, built a long succession of hydro-power plant on rivers
throughout Sweden. Later, this speciality also provided a gateway
to the company’s international operations.
82
Skanska UK
Now ...
Skanska UK Plc is a construction services business encompassing
activities including Construction, Fit-out, Mechanical & Electrical,
Hard FM and Building Services, Design, PFI/PPP, Ceilings &
Decorative Plasterwork, Steel Decking, Civil Engineering, Utilities
and Infrastructure Services and Piling and Ground Engineering.
Our business model is to integrate our core disciplines to deliver
project solutions in our chosen market areas. By integrating all
disciplines and working together with our clients, partners and
supply chain, we make a real difference to the way construction is
delivered.
Backed by the financial strength of our parent, Skanska AB, we focus
totally on our customers in the UK market.We understand our
customers’ needs and combine this with a “can-do” mindset to get
it right first time. By continually improving the service we offer and
delivering on safety, environment, quality and performance – our
clients see us as the first choice of partner.
Our ability to demonstrate real responsibility to the people,
organisations and environments in which we work attracts the next
generation of talent who want to make a real difference.
We employ nearly five thousand staff and undertake over £1.4 billion
of work each year. All operating units have certification to the
management systems ISO 14001, ISO 9001 and OHSAS 18001 and
work strictly in accordance with the Skanska Code of Conduct.
Skanska UK is part of Skanska, headquartered in Stockholm,
one of the world’s leading construction groups with expertise in
construction, development of commercial and residential projects
and public-private partnerships.
83
Cementation Skanska
www.skanska.co.uk/piling-foundations
Maple Cross House
Denham Way
Maple Cross
Rickmansworth
Hertfordshire
WD3 7HL
Tel: +44 (0)1923 423100
Fax: +44 (0)1923 423681
E-mail: cementation@skanska.co.uk
Published by Cementation Skanska Ltd
Printed by AOK Printers
© Cementation Skanska
January 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9564134-0-6.