Our trip to the old Sirius Academy!
On Friday 11th November 2011, Megan Lawlor, George Wegg, Eleisha Furniss, Harry Knight and Miss Spencer went to go see the demolition of the old Sirius Academy building.
Firstly, we arrived at Balfour Beatty Headquarters, everyone was about to start a two minute silence on the balcony. We joined the Balfour Beatty staff in a 2 minute silence to pay our tributes to the fallen soldiers.
After the silence, we went inside and Pat – the receptionist- gave us some juice and biscuits. We put on PPA builders uniform. It included a hard hat, gloves, glasses and a bright coloured vest. This uniform ensured that we were safe when entering the building site.
A short while after Steve Young – the safety chief – took us to the demolition site. We met Daniel; whose job was to make sure no one got in without permission. Then we went to the front of the building were we met Collin the Site Manager. Collins job was to make sure everyone’s at work on time and everyone’s doing the right job.
We found out a number of facts during the tour. One fact included the “drop zone”. The “drop zone” were they knocked out the windows and threw the flooring out the window into the drop zone. Secondly, we found out that some of the flooring was going to Switzerland .After that Collin told us that the rubble from the old building was going to be used to make a road to connect the two sports halls. The builders informed us that they recycle as much materials as possible to try and save money and help the environment.
Collin and Steve then took us around the back of the old building (he had to stop some of the machines to make sure we were safe.) Steve told us that the diggers weigh 36 tonnes which is the same as 36 family cars. The crusher machine weighs 56 tonnes! He also told us that each skip has different materials in and the machine refills the skip itself. Each skip has different materials that are then sent to different recycle points.
After that we walked around to the front of the building. The digger started to move and we imagined it was chasing us, trying to run over! Steve showed us all the pipes that were going into the ground. The pipes where made of galvanised steel and were used to collect in the ground if there was any floods Steve also told us about all the 66 security cameras around the site.
Then we went back to the Balfour Beatty headquarters and we saw a sign saying they had had 225 days without and injury/accident. This is good for Steve as a safety manager because if he goes a certain amount of time without a reported accident he gets a pay rise!
We had to take off our PPA uniform and he opened the gates for us to leave. We all said thank you and we went back to school. We had an amazing day and were invited back at a later stage to see further progress, we look forward to it!