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PRO NEWS
Social media backs‘ fluffy’ Cairo charity
Stevenswood, the UK national network of local trade centres for windows, doors and more, has donated £ 1,000 to charity after asking Facebook followers to vote for their favourite.
Stevenswood asks its Facebook followers to vote for their favourite charity and the money is donated to the organisation that gets the most votes.“ In previous years, it’ s worked really well,” says Ron Hepburn, chief executive officer of Stevenswood.“ This year, it went ballistic. I watched the numbers grow over the holidays. Imagine my surprise when in the first 48 hours we’ d reached more than half a million people! We had reached more than 1.2 million when we closed the competition, and we had nearly 18,000 comments with people’ s favourite charities.” The winning charity with 1,462 votes was Prince Fluffy Kareem. The UK based charity supports the work of Marte and Sherif helping the working animals and their owners in the pyramid area in Cairo, Egypt.
See the results on Facebook @ stevenswooduk
www. stevenswood. co. uk
FEBRUARY 2017 PRO INSTALLER
www. proinstaller. co. uk
CONSTRUCTION A BEACON FOR SOCIAL MOBILITY
A new report published by the Chartered Institute of Building( CIOB) highlights the critical role that construction plays in reversing declining levels of economic and social mobility in the UK. The report, Social Mobility and Construction: Building Routes to Opportunity contains a specially commissioned survey of 1,094 working adults. Results show how among the UK industries, construction ranks near the top for social and economic mobility. And while other industries, such as manufacturing, have shed skilled workers, the construction industry maintains a third of all employment in this occupation group. These skilled trades not only provide social status and solid earnings in themselves, but provide many with an opportunity and a platform for progression within their career, from the trades through to management and professional roles. Commenting on the report, Paul Nash, president of the CIOB said:“ Social mobility is fast becoming one of the defining issues of our time. This report highlights the importance of increasing social mobility and how the construction industry can work to promote greater equality of opportunity for all, particularly in a challenging social and economic environment.” Reflecting on his own career, Paul continued:“ I joined the construction industry at 18 as a management trainee with a construction company; I went on to gain a post-graduate qualification through advice from my professional body. I now sit here as president of the CIOB. I never thought I’ d be in the position I am today but stories such as mine show the quality of opportunity that exists in construction.” The findings also demonstrate the links between the actual built environment and social mobility: a better built environment, including schools, hospitals, homes and infrastructure, provides greater opportunity for economic and social progression. Essentially the shaping of the built environment plays a big part in how these opportunities are distributed and how they impact on our well-being and life chances.
The report was formally launched at an event in the House of Commons. A full copy of the report is available at: https:// policy. ciob. org / research
Business makes it into 25 club
Gloucester-based aluminium specialist CDW Systems is celebrating 25 years in business this month – a real milestone, especially when many UK businesses do not last more than five years. The achievement of reaching a quarter century of trading follows a record end to 2016 which saw group turnover increase by 19 % and hit £ 10m for the first time in its history. Planning is underway to expand CDW’ s factory to accommodate increasing demand for its fabricated products.
www. cdwsystems. co. uk