Episode 4: The Golden Eagle comes down in Thornaby, a 42-room contractor hotel opens opposite Teesworks, and Stantec starts Tees Valley's 20-year plan

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. Same three segments as always: the week's news, a local firm worth knowing about, and one practical tip.

DARREN: We'll start in Thornaby, because the Golden Eagle is finally coming down. MGL Demolition started work on the nineteenth of August, taking the roof and the top floors off the six-storey building with small excavators, working from behind scaffolding.

TERRY: And that's after a year of asbestos work, isn't it.

DARREN: Around four hundred and seventy tonnes of it, plus a full strip-out, starting back in August twenty twenty-five. Once the upper floors are clear the scaffold comes down and bigger machines come in for the ground and first floors. Mark Davison Junior, head of demolition at MGL, said the team had worked tirelessly to get that asbestos out and the focus now is safe demolition. Stockton Council leader Councillor Lisa Evans called the building an eyesore and the start of demolition a milestone for the town.

TERRY: A year of licensed asbestos removal before a machine touches the structure. That's the bit people outside the industry never see, and it's the bit that costs the money.

DARREN: It's expected to finish in the autumn. The site itself is owned by Proudreed Real Estate, and it sits inside the Thornaby Town Deal, funded from the twenty-three point nine million awarded in twenty twenty-one. No redevelopment scheme is confirmed yet.

TERRY: For the trades the immediate work is the usual demolition tail — scaffolding, plant hire, hoarding, traffic management, dust suppression, segregated waste and skips. The bigger prize comes later, when a cleared town centre site with Town Deal money behind it goes to a builder. That's worth watching if you're a regional contractor.

DARREN: Second story, South Bank. The Commercial on Middlesbrough Road has been granted an alcohol licence by Redcar and Cleveland Council. It's a forty-two room hotel, up to eighty-four people, marketed solely at Teesworks and freeport contractors rather than the public. About thirteen jobs in the first wave.

TERRY: Forty-two rooms aimed at contractors only. Think about what that tells you. Nobody converts a building on that basis unless they're confident there's a steady flow of specialist workers travelling in for years, which lines up with NZT Power and the Northern Endurance Partnership.

DARREN: The committee took three minutes to approve it. The applicant, Chris Hankinson, told them it's the closest hotel to Teesworks and the port, and described the bar and restaurant as a necessary evil so guests can eat rather than sit in their rooms. The operator, Site Stays, is recruiting now.

TERRY: The honest read for local firms is that it cuts both ways. It confirms multi-year workload for mechanical and electrical contractors. It also confirms how much of that labour is coming in from outside the region and competing for the same skilled people you're trying to hold on to.

DARREN: Third, and this one's less exciting but it matters more than it sounds. Stantec has been appointed by Tees Valley Combined Authority to lead the region's spatial development strategy — a twenty-year-plus framework for housing, infrastructure and economic growth across Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool, sitting above the local plans.

TERRY: So it decides where the work is, ten and fifteen years out.

DARREN: Effectively. It identifies growth areas, which shapes where housing allocations land and which brownfield sites get unlocked. Stantec's leading, with Prior and Partners, Montagu Evans, Richard Wood Associates and Camargue, and their Darlington office handles regional collaboration. There's a public engagement programme.

TERRY: And that engagement programme is the free bit. If you're a contractor or supplier and you've got a view on where employment land should go, consultation is the cheapest chance you'll ever get to influence your own pipeline. Most trade businesses ignore it and then complain about the outcome.

DARREN: Which brings us to segment two. This week's local firm: Cavendish Northern, based in Billingham.

TERRY: Go on.

DARREN: Pipe fabrication. In June they were awarded a piping pre-fabrication contract by Technip Energies for the East Coast Cluster projects — that's NZT Power and the Northern Endurance Partnership. The work is done at their Billingham facility and it's expected to create more than sixty new roles: welders, platers, pipefitters, inspectors, quality assurance and management staff.

TERRY: Sixty skilled roles in Billingham, off one contract.

DARREN: And they already employ seven apprentices, with three more recruited recently. Their operations director Jonathan Brown said the award lets them provide long-term employment for Teesside's skilled tradespeople and reinvest in the fabrication facilities. Energy Minister Michael Shanks welcomed it on a visit to the Teesworks Skills Academy.

TERRY: The point for listeners isn't the press release. It's that the biggest single supply chain opportunity on Teesside right now is off-site fabrication. The main contractors want packages prefabricated in a controlled shop and delivered to site. If you've got shop capacity, coded welders and the quality paperwork, that's where the money is going.

DARREN: Right. Tip of the week, then.

TERRY: This one's for anyone quoting demolition, strip-out or enabling work. Price the hidden phase, not the visible one. On the Golden Eagle the demolition is weeks. The asbestos removal was a year. If you quote off what you can see from the pavement, you'll lose your shirt.

DARREN: So what should people actually do?

TERRY: Three things. Ask for the asbestos survey before you price — a refurbishment and demolition survey, not a management survey, they're not the same document. Second, price the disposal separately and by tonnage, because hazardous waste rates and haulage will swing the job more than your labour will. And third, put a written provisional sum in for anything not surveyed, with a clear rate for what happens if it's found. Say it out loud at the quote stage.

DARREN: Rather than arguing about it halfway through.

TERRY: Exactly. The contractors who get burned aren't the ones who priced too low on labour. They're the ones who took on someone else's unknowns for free.

DARREN: Good place to stop. That's episode four. Every story is linked in the show notes with the full transcript at teessidetradepodcast.co.uk, and the written versions are 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.