Group News

Spiderman comes to Gainsborough!

Early birds out and about on Saturday morning may have been surprised to see a figure clinging to the walls of the Methodist Church in North Street .

 Had Spiderman had enough of fighting crime in New York and decided to bring his Super-hero skills to the mean streets of Lincolnshire?

 No - this particular Super-hero was one of civil engineering specialists Topbond's commercial abseilers undertaking a safety inspection of the church. 

 Topbond have been involved in abseiling since the early 1990s when the commercial possibilities of what had previously been a leisure activity were first recognised.  Roped access enables inspections and small repairs to be undertaken without the need to use scaffolding.  This has obvious savings both in time and cost - although the sight of a man hanging from a rope high above the pavement can cause a few heads to turn!

 In this instance Topbond were required to undertake an inspection of the full exterior of the modern masonry and concrete church and to issue a defect report.  Abseiling ropes were fixed to the roof of the church and qualified abseilers lowered down to undertake the inspection. The entire inspection took around 8 hours and started at 5am to minimise disruption.

Topbond have undertaken abseiling surveys on numerous buildings from tower blocks through to national landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament and the Humber Bridge. 

You don't need to be a Super-hero to do the work - but you do need a good head for heights!

Topbond's historic bridge restoration wins accolades

Topbond's work on the historic Headstone Manor bridge and moat has been recognised with nominations for two awards.

The project was shortlisted for a Historic Bridges Award.  These awards are for best practice and innovation in the repair and restoration of the nation's historic infrastructure stock. 

It also received 'Highly Commended' in Harrow Heritage Trust's Architectural and Enviroment Awards 2010.

Headstone Manor in Harrow is a Grade 1 Listed Building built around 1310.  The Moat surrounding the Manor is the only surviving filled moat in Middlesex and Topbond were involved in an extensive refurbishment project on the moat and access bridge.

 In order to undertake the refurbishment, the moat first had to be dammed, pumped out and years of accumulated debris removed.   Since this included a quantity of old bricks believed to be from an earlier structure these were removed carefully by hand and stock piled to enable them to be assessed for their architectural value. 

 Repairs involved repairs to the intrados barrel and pier foundations, the bridge spandrels and retaining walls, placing service ducts and channels, casting a new deck slab, resurfacing the bridge  and installing new timber parapets and access gates, undertaken by Topbond's in-house joinery division, Howard Joinery.

ISO 9001:2008

Topbond have just undergone their annual audit at their Head Office and continued accreditation under the ISO 9001 scheme has been recommended.

The audit consisted of  a one day visit to our Sittingbourne office followed by a half day visit to one of our sites.  No non- conformances or corrective actions were identified.  An earlier audit of our northern office was also successfully completed.

What our clients say about us

We at Topbond pride ourselves on doing a good job so we are always delighted to receive positive feedback about our work.

 Here are some comments received in the past few months:

 "May I firstly compliment the team that you sent to dig our drainage gully. Anton, Darren and Costa were very diligent and ensured that we had as little inconvenience as possible.'

 'Whilst I was there, several local residents commented on how hard your crew had worked, kept the place tidy and parked their vehicles with respect to them.  It is not often we get comments on the contractors so perhaps you will pass this on as they obviously made a good impression.'

 'These guys are in a league of their own!  You have seen the stairs here so not much more to say!  They are very good to work with!'

'I'm writing to say how pleased I am with the work carried out by Topbond plc. ... No noise at all and the area was left neat and tidy.... Topbond was certainly the right choice for the task.'