Tag Archive for: Staff

Howardson Group Staff Take on National Three Peaks Challenge

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Howardson Group Staff Take on National Three Peaks Challenge: A team from Howardson Group is preparing to take on the formidable National Three Peaks Challenge in memory of their much-missed colleague, Joe Emery, who sadly passed away in July last year.

The challenge will see the team scaling the highest mountains in Scotland, England, and Wales within 24 hours, all in support of the British Heart Foundation.

Howardson Group Staff Take on National Three Peaks Challenge

Howardson Group Staff Take on National Three Peaks Challenge

A gentle Giant

Joe was a cherished member of the Howardson Group family, working in the warehouse and factory. Known as a true “gentle giant,” Joe was deeply respected and admired by all who knew him.

He was a well-known figure in the cricketing world, always cheerful, kind, and willing to lend a helping hand.

His hardworking and honest nature made him an integral part of the team, and his intelligence shone through as a member of the winning quiz team at Howardson’s 2024 event.

Joining the Howardson team for the challenge are Mark Willerton, Sales Manager from Russell Groundcare, and Paul Thompson, Head Groundsperson at Derby County FC.

A Demanding Journey

Together, they will be guided by Mountain Bear Adventures as they take on this demanding journey.

Taking place on the 5th and 6th of June, the National Three Peaks Challenge involves climbing a total of 3,064 meters (10,052 feet) over 23 miles (37 km), with a gruelling 462 miles of driving between peaks. The mountains they will tackle are:

  • Ben Nevis (Scotland) – 1,345m
  • Scafell Pike (England) – 978m
  • Snowdon (Wales) – 1,085m

Supporting The British Heart Foundation

This extraordinary effort is a testament to the impact Joe had on those around him.

Howardson Group is proud to support the British Heart Foundation through this fundraising effort. Donations will go towards life-saving research and support for those affected by heart conditions.

To support the team and donate to the cause, please visit https://www.justgiving.com/page/howardson-3peakchallenge

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Experienced and Trainee Staff

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The UK’s leading Golf & Sports Turf Construction Company is looking for Experienced and Trainee Staff to join our Golf, Sports & Landscape Teams on projects around the UK & Europe

Experienced and Trainee Staff

Experienced and Trainee Staff

These roles may suit individuals currently working in greenkeeping or grounds maintenance, landscaping or anyone who wants to develop a career in the turf construction industry.

Irrigation & Land Drainage Engineers

We are one of the leading installers of irrigation systems and land drainage networks in the UK’s Sports construction and landscape markets. With interesting and challenging projects, a distinguished history and a determined focus on quality, its an exciting time to join the MJ Abbott team.

We are looking for energetic additions to our ranks. No previous irrigation or drainage experience is necessary, but you will be eager to learn, prepared to get stuck in from day one and happy to work outdoors in all weathers.

You will be hard working and prepared to work outdoors in all weathers

You must be willing to travel and work away from home

Ideally you will hold a full UK driving licence

This is an exciting opportunity leading to a rewarding career with a well established yet dynamic company.

Excellent pay and benefits package for these permanent positions.

Please contact for an application pack
Jules Simmons – jules.simmons@mjabbott.co.uk

mjabbott.co.uk

MJ Abbott Ltd is an equal opportunities employer

ET Lander the extra staff member at Olympic Park

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ET Lander the extra staff member at Olympic Park: The Etesia ET Lander electric utility vehicle is like having an extra member of staff according to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’s Head Gardener Gary Spreadbury.

Following a competitive procurement process, idverde was selected as a grounds maintenance partner for the Queen Elizabeth Park in in early 2012. Ever since then it has been responsible for park, plant and wildlife management and maintenance.

ET Lander the extra staff member at Olympic Park

ET Lander the extra staff member at Olympic Park

Gary Spreadbury has been the Head Gardener at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park since May this year, and he claims his working life has been made a little easier by the Etesia ET Lander.

“What I really like about the ET Lander is that it fits and can manoeuvre in tight spaces around the Olympic Park,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of small paths which big vehicles can’t fit down, so it’s very efficient and time saving. It’s used mainly for the transporting of materials around the site, especially during the winter and autumn months when it comes to the leaf clearing and for the mulching of the gardens.”

100% electric, spacious, well-equipped and user-friendly, the ET Lander is built on a robust chassis and has an array of options including a three-way tipper bed with dual control from the fully fitted two-seater cab or by remote control when outside the vehicle. With a length of just 3.72 meters, the ET Lander is very compact. Thanks to the power steering, the short turning radius of 4.40 meters and 360 ° visibility, it goes anywhere. The autonomy of the vehicle lasts for a full working day – without noise pollution, can transport loads of up to 940kgs and can also tow up to 750kgs.

The latest models are fully N1 homologation compliant meaning that the ET Landers are fully road legal along with being able to be used off road. They also feature lithium-ion batteries which ensures that the range of the ET Lander extends to 100km and have a charger system compatible with a standard type 2EV car charger.

“I’ve used battery powered vehicles before but in my opinion the ET Lander is the best by far,” continued Gary. “It runs a lot smoother and feels like you’re driving a car; it is so light that you could take it onto the pitch without causing damage and it just makes working life a lot easier. The ET Lander is like having an extra member of staff – it’s definitely earning its living and is well worth the money.”

Gary isn’t the only one at the Olympic Park who has been impressed with the ET Lander. Chris James, Contract Manager for idverde, is also upbeat about the innovative electric utility vehicle.

“Aside from its ability to manoeuvre, the ET Lander has lots of other great features such as reversing cameras and the option of adding things to it like PTO’s, salt spreaders and water tanks. I like the fact that it’s got some storage units within the vehicle underneath the body too.

“The all-round visibility from the cab is another key feature that we like about the ET Lander. We have around 6 million visitors through the park each year so it’s essential to be mindful of the public.

“The ET Lander is an absolute must-have vehicle for any grounds maintenance contractor, but I believe that there are a lot of other industries out there that could make use of this vehicle as well.”

idverde purchased the Etesia ET Lander through RT Machinery, and Chris feels as though they are in good hands.

“The communication that I have had with the team at RT Machinery has always been positive and they are quick to respond to emails and questions. Some of our other contracts use RT machinery and they always speak highly of them. The availability and the quality of the products that they’re selling is 100%.”

To see the machine in action at the Olympic Park, please click here.

For further information, please contact Etesia UK on 01295 680120 or visit www.etlander.co.uk

For more news, reviews and insightful views, you can follow Etesia UK on Twitter @EtesiaUK and like the company’s Facebook page – www.facebook.com/EtesiaUK. You can also view the latest Etesia videos by visiting www.youtube.com/EtesiaUK.

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Role of grounds staff is key

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Role of grounds staff is key: With ‘no pitch no play’ one of the biggest barriers to levelling the playing field between women and men’s football, the success of the women’s game depends largely on the involvement of the grounds industry.

Ahead of speaking at SALTEX, the leading turf management show being held on Birmingham NEC from 02-03 November, on increasing pitch capacity for the women’s game, Hannah Buckley, senior facilities and project manager for the women’s professional game at The FA, shares why the importance of the pitch and ensuring the groundswell of forward movement for the womens’ and girls’ sport is not lost because of poor playing conditions.

Role of grounds staff is key

Role of grounds staff is key

“When any new sport or technology comes along, some people will be reluctant to embrace it, others will do so wholeheartedly. We all saw this with those who hosted women’s matches and practise for the Euros and those who didn’t.

“It’s important to remember the men’s game is over 150 years old, women’s is 50 and the young girls’ pro game is only 11 years old. At the start of our journey, all the infrastructure was built around 150 years of the men’s game.

“What’s important going forward is to remove the unknown entities when it comes to additional female users of any pitch. Everything is the same with regards to the pitch and its set up, it’s only the players who are different. Accommodating women’s sport causes far less damage than the men’s: the players weigh less, are smaller and therefore it is important to acknowledge different impacts against different users. Understanding differences provides opportunities for example professional training environments don’t need as much space in a natural pitch training environment – and that reduces the initial budget outlay and ongoing maintenance costs.

“Several women’s professional clubs have secured investment from the Premier League in the last three and a half years to improve pitch quality delivering new stitched and carpet hybrid products.

“Women’s football is here to stay and we’ve got to focus on the pitches we’ve got. England has its infrastructure challenges. We’re an island with limited land availability, with predominantly urban stadiums and training grounds. We are not going to start by building new pitches, so we need to understand the playing surface and the game and work with what we’ve got and make them work for the future of the sport. And all sports groundspeople have a role to play in this. The process starts in education settings, local authorities and clubs, and in.

“My talk at SALTEX in fact considers this very subject and looks at the impact of Leigh Sports Village in Wigan. This example shows the impact a focus on grass roots can have at its finest. The venue had the biggest investment in public sports, recreational and educational facilities in Wigan borough for many years and has transformed Leigh into one of the finest hubs of activity in the North West. Its multi-surfaces serve the whole community providing a range of activities for local people as well as hosting international sporting events. It attracts the next generation of sporting stars in the community but is also home to professional rugby league team Leigh Centurions and Manchester United’s Women’s, U23s and U19s teams. It’s been a host stadium for the Rugby League World Cup 2022 and UEFA Women’s Euro 2022. The plethora of sports they host is down to the quality of surfaces and I’ll look at the how and why they’re able to do that in my Learning LIVE seminar at SALTEX.

“It’s something we can all work together on too. And by that I don’t just mean by looking at the way other sports are incorporating this requirement into their plans going forward or even other countries, but how grounds teams need more diversity – opportunities exist for women in helping prepare the surfaces for the women’s sport, we need diversity to be reflected in that sector, there’s a whole career pathway that could be incredibly rewarding for women.

“What really puts it into perspective is the moment when the Lionness’ won the Euros it was years in the making for those working in the womens’ game – it was the moment we’d all been waiting for, and it came on home turf. That feeling was indescribable and something we want more and more people in the industry to be a part of, experience and celebrate. We now have the world’s best sporting women’s league and everything to play for in terms of continuing the momentum. We need others to join in with those who supported us then, to support us in the next chapter as we work towards the next international event.”

Hannah joins Ted Mitchell of the Rugby Football Union, Iain James from the England and Wales Cricket Board and Ashleigh Seddon form the Rugby Football League at SALTEX on Thursday in theatre 1 at 1.45pm as they look at how groundspeople can increase pitch capacity for the women’s game. Register for a free ticket at saltex.org.uk / register here

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Turf Tank One relieves staff pressure

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Turf Tank One relieves staff pressure: As far as jobs go, Eton College provides a unique challenge. As one of the most recognisable names in education with great historical significance, the school’s reputation from students to sports pitches is paramount.

Since May 2020, Eton’s 38 winter sports pitches and 1,500 acres of land spanning the M4 all the way to 2012 Olympic venue Dorney Lake have been under the control of Grounds Manager Lee Marshallsay.

Turf Tank One relieves staff pressure

Turf Tank One relieves staff pressure

His tenure has coincided with the Covid pandemic, which brought to light the number of man-hours his team spent line marking and the fact something needed to be done about it.

For context, Lee has a team of thirty. Eleven are groundsmen, with two on the college’s golf course full time and another pair dedicated to line marking. Over the summer, the line marking duo spent six to seven weeks marking out football and rugby pitches for the commencement of the school year, and in November, Lee checked his Turf Keeper records to discover his team spent over 850 hours marking.

The man-hours and pressure involved in completing this task between terms had Lee looking for alternative options. Despite being initially sceptical of a robotic line maker, he eventually turned to Turf Tank. https://turftank.com/en/

“It was also about helping the team, so they didn’t feel under pressure all the time. With the robot, where it’s taken us six or seven weeks to mark everything, we can effectively do that in a week now. Suddenly, the pressure has gone, and if we have staff on holiday or off sick, it keeps us out of trouble.

“We’ve got some projects lined up this summer that we are going to do in-house, and suddenly, that marker frees up two people, and we can put extra staff on the projects. That’s how we’ll use it as an aid and addition to the team to help plan workload and projects.”

With the Turf Tank One in place, Lee is looking to cut his marking hours by more than half. For him, this will increase pitch quality with additional aeration, cutting and finessing taking place. But choosing a robot and company that could provide everything he needed was critical.

The support from Alex and the Turf Tank team has been exemplary, with all questions answered quickly and I know that there is a full-time service engineer if I ever need hands-on assistance.”

“I think to be fair; the Turf Tank instantly ticked a lot of boxes for us. And it wasn’t just me, my team were there, and we tried other machines a week apart on the same pitch. We looked at line quality, how much paint it was putting out, how quick it was to set up, and there were similarities.

“But then we started to think about the differences. Do we want to be tied into a paint deal? Do we want an annual subscription fee? Turf Tank gave us that bit more flexibility.

“The other factor was the base station. You read a lot about the pros and cons, but to be honest as soon as I saw how it interacted with the machine, and how much more accurate the marking was, compared to those without using a base station, the whole team were like ‘it’s a no brainer, isn’t it?’ It blew us away, to be fair, and we bought the Turf Tank, and we now have base station points installed across the site, and it has worked really, really well.

“The Turf Tank records templates for initial marking and subsequent over-marking. Being able to get those templates was a significant point for us and nothing has been out of the remit of the robot. We’ve got most of the pitches loaded up now, including where the goals are actually smaller than a football goal, but we’ve managed to get the robot between the two posts and mark. Everything we’ve asked for has happened, and it has been great

“We want to teach our staff new skills and using and understanding the latest technology is very much part of Eton College’s ethos. I’m very much won-over and very impressed with the Turf Tank One line-marking robot. And if I were to move anywhere else, it is one of the first things I’d want to have in my fleet.”

For more information on the Turf Tank One or to have a demonstration contact alex@turftank.co.uk (southern UK) or matt@turftank.co.uk (northern UK) Michael@turftank.co.uk (Scotland and Ireland)

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