Year: <span>2019</span>

CJ Thorne & Co were delighted to welcome Amy and Luke from Uckfield College for a week of work experience with the company. Having spent time in our head office, in our workshop and on several site visits, they told us they thoroughly enjoyed themselves and have learnt a great deal about the world of Civil Engineering and how everything is put in place for projects, etc.

Perhaps the experience might have inspired them to, one day, pursue a career in Civil Engineering.

Well, whatever they do, the staff at Thornes can safely say they’ll both make model employees. It has been a pleasure to spend time with them, and we all wish them well for the future.

Amy and Luke are pictured with Jake from our workshop, where they cleverly created some souvenirs out of spare materials to remind them of their time with us!

We have recently completed some work which included the improvement of the existing road junction at the entrance to the British Gypsum, Mountfield works in East Sussex. The site is situated approximately 75 metres south of a Network Rail level crossing. We also constructed a new retaining wall, we widened the British Gypsum Mine access road over a length of approximately 250m, and completed pavement resurfacing and other associated works.

Congratulations to our Training Manager Jools Schneider on reaching another important milestone! Chocolate and alcohol seemed to be a familiar theme amongst the gifts – maybe that’s the secret of the youthful looks!

Thorne’s environmental credentials are clearly on show at Hooe WWTW in East Sussex, where our value engineering input has resulted in design developments that have reduced our carbon footprint. Firstly, we used lime stabilisation techniques when creating the site compound, significantly reducing the amount of material required in what was a very wet area; and secondly, to avoid removal of excessive amounts of waste from site, we instigated the decision to crush and recycle concrete and demolition material from the redundant sludge beds and the access road.

15 years after the award winning reconstruction of the Cascade between the Upper and Lower Women’s Way Ponds at Sheffield Park Gardens, we returned to repair and refurbish the Cascade Bridge. The work was carried out in our workshops at Head Office in Uckfield, and the photo shows the bridge being lowered back into position.

In conjunction with sister company Hobart Paving, Thorne won the contract to plane off and resurface the main drive into Hampton Court Palace, and we have since won additional work to carry out resurfacing and drainage works to a separate access road in this iconic royal setting.

Work is well underway on the extension to Windmill Hill WWTW and it is good to see our wholly owned and maintained fleet of plant completing the bulk earthworks on one of the last schemes undertaken by Southern Water in AMP6. Congratulations to all involved in maintaining high standards of safety if a tight and compact working area.

Regular Health & Safety training is absolutely vital to ensure everyone is kept safe and knows their responsibilities whilst working on sites. It also gives staff the chance to be updated on changing legislation, look at case studies and be able to ask questions and give feedback.

The whole Thorne Group staff attended the annual Back to Work meeting on 4th January 2019. As well as key updates and messages from the MD Chris Thorne, Asbestos Awareness & Working at Height training was also carried out by our Health and Safety lead Lance Milton.