From summer job to structural success: The Newcastle Arena story that built a business
CONSTRUCTION
History – a recent trip to Newcastle Arena brought back happy memories for SCH Site Services boss Gary Finley, who helped to construct the arena as a teenager.
STRICTLY STEEL
From summer job to structural success: The Newcastle Arena story that built a business
The lights dimmed at Newcastle Arena, but for one man in the audience, the real story wasn’ t happening on stage – it was written in the steel beams above his head.
As thousands of Strictly Come Dancing fans settled into their seats for the show in January, SCH Site Services managing director Gary Finley was experiencing something most people never could; watching a show inside a building he had helped construct as a 14‐year‐old, some 30 years earlier.
“ My wife thought it was just another Christmas night out,” he recalls.
“ But sitting there, looking up at those massive steel trusses I’ d helped install in 1994, I was transported back to what became the foundation of everything I’ ve built since.”
The year was 1994. While Gary’ s schoolmates enjoyed their final carefree summer before starting their last year of senior school, the future SCH leader was heading to the most significant building site in the North-East.
Newcastle Arena – a bold vision by music mogul Chas Chandler and businessman Nigel Stanger – was rising from a dusty bowl on the banks of the Tyne.
Working for a subcontract steel erection business, the future business owner was earning £ 25 a day while his older friends were stuck on £ 29‐a‐week YTS schemes.
But the real value wasn’ t in his pay packet; it was in the education he was receiving.
“ The commute from Spennymoor was a lot of fun,” he remembers.
“ Five or six of us crammed into a small two‐seater Ford Escort van, surrounded by tools and cigarette smoke so thick you could practically chew it – but the craic was excellent.”
That summer of’ 94 became one of the hottest on record. On site, temperatures soared as heat reflected off raw metal.
In an era before modern safety standards, some steel erectors sat on the riggers of the crane in nothing but rigger boots and Calvin Klein boxers, watching the hammering of bolts in blistering conditions.
The scale of the Arena project was unlike anything the teenager had experienced. Standing on the ground, neck craned back, he watched experienced steel erectors“ walking the steel”, silhouetted against the sun like tightrope walkers without a net.
The ambition was staggering. This wasn’ t just another building – it was destined
64 | Tees Business