Episode 3: BAM starts the £13m Skinningrove flood scheme, 172 homes lodged in Stockton, and Billingham's BA Joinery wins Teesside Growth Award

Transcript

DARREN: Welcome to the Teesside Trade Podcast, the weekly show covering construction, trades and property news across the Tees Valley. I'm Darren Turnbull.

TERRY: And I'm Terry Oakes. Three things this week: the news, a local firm worth knowing about, and one practical tip.

DARREN: Let's start with East Cleveland, because there's a proper civils job underway. The Environment Agency, working with Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, has started construction on the thirteen million pound Skinningrove Flood Alleviation Scheme. BAM is the contractor, and it runs through to twenty twenty-eight.

TERRY: That's a long programme for a village that size. What does the job actually involve?

DARREN: Stone Row Bridge is coming out, along with its flood gates and parapets, and a new bridge goes in between New Company Row and Zetland Row, next to the old school. Bridge work runs from September this year to late twenty twenty-seven — piled foundations and abutments on both sides of the beck, then a crane lift for the new deck. Demolition and infilling of the old flood walls follows into early twenty twenty-eight. It protects more than a hundred homes and ends the need for manually operated flood gates.

TERRY: And that's the bit that matters for the trades. A two-year civils programme drags a long tail of subcontract work behind it — piling, groundworks, temporary access roads, traffic management, access platforms, reinstatement. East Cleveland doesn't see much continuous civils spend, so for firms round Loftus, Saltburn and Guisborough, that's rare steady work rather than a fortnight here and there.

DARREN: Second story, and it's Stockton. Two housing applications landed with the council within days of each other. The larger one is outline permission for up to a hundred and sixty homes on land north of Darlington Back Lane, off Yarm Back Lane — a twenty-four acre site, allocated for housing in the local masterplan. The smaller is twelve affordable homes near Raleigh Road in Norton: mostly bungalows, one and two bedroom.

TERRY: Neither has consent yet, so nobody should be counting that money. But the shape of it tells you something. Bungalows and smaller units — more roof area per home, more ground-level external works, simpler access. That's work that suits regional contractors and local roofers and sparks, not just the volume housebuilders.

DARREN: And on labour — British Steel is taking on seventeen apprentices at its Teesside and Skinningrove mills next month, electrical, mechanical and structural engineering, part of a seventy-strong intake. Over a thousand people applied.

TERRY: A thousand applications for seventy places. So it isn't that young people don't want the training. It's that there aren't enough funded places.

DARREN: Right. Which brings us to segment two — a local firm worth knowing about. This week it's BA Joinery, based at the Purvis Building in Billingham.

TERRY: Tell us about them.

DARREN: Bespoke joinery manufacture and installation for the fit-out industry, working right across the UK from a Billingham factory. The company was incorporated in May two thousand and eight, and it's grown to around thirty-two staff. This month it was named the Teesside winner of the Growth Award at the twenty twenty-six North East Business Awards, and it goes to the regional grand final on the first of October.

TERRY: That's a good example of what people underestimate about Teesside. The assumption is we're all site trades and heavy industry. A manufacturer shipping fitted joinery to projects nationally, from a unit in Billingham, employing thirty-odd people — that's a proper export business for the area.

DARREN: And it's the same story as the housing and the flood scheme: the work exists, the constraint is skilled people.

TERRY: Which leads nicely into the tip.

DARREN: Go on then.

TERRY: If you're a small firm and you want work off schemes like Skinningrove, don't wait for the tender to appear. By then it's too late. Main contractors build their subcontract lists months ahead, and they buy from firms already pre-qualified. So get your paperwork straight now: a recognised health and safety accreditation, current public liability and employers' liability certificates, method statements and risk assessments you can actually produce on the day, and two or three referees who'll pick the phone up.

DARREN: And approach them before the job starts.

TERRY: Exactly. Ring the contractor's supply chain or procurement contact while the enabling work is still going on, ask what packages they'll be letting locally, and ask what they need from you to get on the list. Nine times out of ten it's a form and some certificates. The firms that win the packages aren't always the cheapest — they're the ones who were already approved when the buyer went looking.

DARREN: Good advice. That's it for episode five. Every story is linked in the show notes with the full transcript at teessidetradepodcast.co.uk, and the written versions at teessidetradenews.co.uk.

TERRY: If you run a Teesside trade business and you'd like a mention on the show, get in touch through the site. See you next week.