July Breakfast Club: finditinsandwell and the BSF team
Date added:
10 July 2009
finditinsandwell's Breakfast Clubs usually attract more than 100 businesspeople each month - they're believed to be the best-attended morning events of their kind in the region. But as soon as we got the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) team on board for our July meeting, we knew it was going to be a sell-out success.
Why? Because BSF could potentially bring millions of pounds' worth of business opportunities to Sandwell. And Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council's BSF partner, E4L (Environments for Learning) is committed to ensuring that local businesses, wherever possible, benefit from the work.
So the 150+ delegates who woke up early to attend our 7am meeting at Sandwell Council House knew there was a very real chance of winning BSF work and boosting their businesses.
"We could build a whole school just using the businesses and knowledge in this room," said finditinsandwell's Steve Massey in his opening speech. "And indeed the Council would like local businesses like yours to win the BSF work. Of course we can't guarantee that you'll win the contracts just because you're local, but we can give you the support you need to win the work on merit."
Here's a flavour of the day:
BSF is the UK's biggest ever schools investment programme: a national government project to rebuild or renew nearly every secondary school in England. In Sandwell alone, BSF will see £370m invested in the borough’s secondary schools, providing state-of-the-art teaching and learning facilities for community use.
Twenty schools in Sandwell are expected to benefit - and businesses and the wider community too, according to Paul Piddock, BSF Project Director. "You're going to play an important part in the economic revival of the borough," he told delegates, explaining that the new schools were designed to be "welcoming, inclusive buildings" that would be used not only for teaching pupils, but the communities around them, staying open in the evenings and maximising the benefits of the investment. He explained that 145 craft apprenticeships would be created during the building process.
So how can finditinsandwell members get access to the business created by BSF in Sandwell? (The Interserve team, responsible for delivering the BSF programme, is currently looking in particular for companies who can supply to the Rowley Regis campus project.)
Here's a step-by-step guide:
1. Make sure you're registered with finditinsandwell (it's free).
2. Email finditin.sandwell@interserve.com with an initial expression of interest, giving information about the scope of your business.
3. You will then be invited to complete Interserve's online registration form.
4. After completing the form (referred to as K29), you will either be welcomed to the next stage in the process, or told that you have been unsuccessful. If you are not asked to proceed, you may be able to request feedback.
5. Successful applicants will then be invited to complete another online form (called L23), containing health & safety information.
6. Once fully registered, keep an eye out on finditinsandwell for relevant business opportunities with Interserve. If you have registered fully and completed your minisite, you will receive email alerts.
During the morning, we also heard from Mike Hudson of Sandwell LEP (Local Education Partnership); Andy Pearson and Katie Blackbird of Interserve and Nigel Muirhead of Agilisys. Afterwards, finditinsandwell members who had booked early enough were able to sit down for one-to-one meetings with our speakers and their colleagues. For people interested in the layout of the new schools, scale models of the new school campuses were available for viewing.
Of course no finditinsandwell Breakfast Club would be complete without the usual business-to-business networking, free sausage sandwiches and our mini camcorder draw - which was won this month by Paul Kendrick of RMD Kwikform Ltd.
Congratulations, Paul, and thank you to everyone from the BSF team who helped make such a success of our latest early morning meeting. We're happy to say it was being filmed by Fünf Media (led by Sky presenter Marverine Cole), so you'll be able to download all the content as a podcast soon!
Did you win business at the Breakfast Club? How did your one-to-one meeting go? We'd love to hear from you: email stephen_massey@sandwell.gov.ukand tell us your thoughts.
Don't miss August and September's Breakfast Clubs!
Your comments ...
"Just to mention: what a great event yesterday the finditinsandwell team have yet again come up trumps with a very informative and structured event - If any of us win any business it will be largely down to yourselves so THANK YOU".
- Jane Sweeney, Forkers
"Through the local ties and our invitation to the Sandwell breakfast meetings we were able to sign on to provide construction professionals to Sandwell MBC. This could not have be achieved without the initial breakfast meeting where we met Steve Massey who added his weight to our application to Templink."
- Gareth Simpson, Jonathan Lee Recruitment
"Made some good contacts yesterday, as usual great organizing."
- Larry Mazic, Zicam Integrated Security
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