News

We are very excited to announce that the first phase of our projects for the London Borough of Redbridge has been nominated for a London LABC Building Excellence Award. The winners will be announced via a livestream at 1pm on June 17th.

Fire safety on construction projects has probably never had a greater profile so our latest Fire Safety Bulletin, showing the impacts of recent legislation on the construction industry as well as what BG are doing to help drive change in terms of fire safety is an important read. in the bulletin we show projects and share information on this changing landscape.

We are very pleased to announce that as of today a small number of our staff will be returning to work at our head office in Eltham, while following the government set guidelines. Please note that at this time all offices are closed to visitors.

Well done to our 3 new Chartered Building Surveyors from our Head Office. Jack Plummer, Max Skeet and George Gardner who all passed their APC exams and as of last week are Chartered.

 

It was a busy week on the quality accreditation front with Baily Garner being separately audited for 3 different accreditations over the first 7 days of June. We’re thrilled to confirm that we were successful in maintaining our quality accreditations for our ISO 9001 Quality Management System, our Cyber Essentials Plus IT security accreditation and our ISO 14001 Environmental Management System.

Quotes from the auditors like “Baily Garner manage projects, staff, training, risk, etc. really well and Quality is the icing on top” and “It appears that Baily Garner embrace the full spirit of ISO 9001:2015, as it is based all around risk” are a great reflection of the essence of the Baily Garner approach.

You can see more of our accreditaions here

In these uncertain times the many challenges presented by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has seen an impact on the economy and how businesses operate. With the obvious economic impact unfolding and the deployment of staff to home working policy, tenant’s will be considering their strategy for retention and future occupation of properties, looking perhaps at early lease breaks or not renewing leases. Landlord’s might therefore be faced with a tenant vacating early requiring them to manage a re-let.

Whether you are a Landlord or a Tenant considering strategy prior to lease termination, there will be an obligation to deal with Dilapidations to yield up the property in line with lease requirement. This normally involves reinstatement, repairs and decorations of the occupied space in advance of lease end, requiring advance planning to minimise the impact on business operations and financial liabilities.

Baily Garner are a multi-disciplined property consultancy who can assist both Landlord’s and Tenant’s with Dilapidations advice to ensure your organisation considers options to make an informed decision. Within the Dilapidations process Baily Garner can also manage refurbishment works of occupied space to ensure smooth transition and handover is achieved to allow a tenant to meet obligations (when acting for a Tenant) or for a Landlord to re-market the space (when acting for a Landlord).

If you are a Tenant or a Landlord, for any enquiries on Dilapidations please contact Joe Jackson or James Thacker

  

Baily Garner is now following the latest CLC guidance set out in its Site Operating Procedure Advice note (3rd) version 15/4/2020 and drawing this latest guidance to our Partners attention, to request that it is being followed on those sites currently in operation.

The Housing Forum members have put together a bulletin entitled “Coronavirus – a view from the sector” which reaffirms a Partnership approach to how the housing industry should manage the implications of the current Covid-19 public health crisis. Baily Garner LLP were keen and active contributors to this guidance which we would encourage readers to read, contemplate and share.

Our Kensington Street scheme has been shortlisted in the Completed Schemes category at this year’s Housing Design Awards. Baily Garner provided Architectural and Employer’s Agent Services for this 100% Affordable Housing Scheme in Brighton for Brighton and Hove City Council and the Guinness Partnership.

You can view the project as well as the other nominees here. We are very excited to see who the winners will be when announced this July.

UPDATE 24 MARCH

As the Covid-19 crisis has been deepening, day by day, we have been carefully reviewing all our operations and putting plans into place to ensure that we are following and complying with all government guidance to keep people safe and reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus infection whilst, at the same time, also ensuring we continue to provide the appropriate service and support to all our clients and construction project partners.

Following the Prime Ministers announcements on Monday 23 March, we would like to update you as follows.

Offices closed from close of business Tuesday 24^th March

We are in the position where all our staff have the capability to work from home without any loss of service provision so in the light of the Prime Minister’s announcements on 23 March we will be

• Following government guidance about essential travel and closing all our offices from close of business Tuesday 24^th March

• Where sites remain open and the contractor’s policy allows visitors, subject to all Public Health England guidelines being observed and transport being available it is our intention to continue to visit sites to carry out our duties, wherever this is possible

• All our staff have the ability to continue supporting you on all our projects in our customary inter-disciplinary way, accessing all necessary IT software and systems from home, and communicating face to face using video conferencing technology through Microsoft Teams.
• This technology can also be used to keep in contact and host virtual project specific meetings even if meeting participants are not all Microsoft Teams users, so if this will help your project please get in touch with your Baily Garner project contacts
• Telephone calls to the office switchboard numbers will still be monitored and messages managed and forwarded during this closure period but we do recommend that where you need to contact somebody, you use their mobile phone number as the initial means of contact where you know it.
• Senior management are meeting regularly at both strategic and operational levels to ensure that we continue to deal appropriately with all the challenges of managing a business in such unprecedented times.

Continuing to keep you updated

We will continue to update you as clients as events continue to unfold using all available media including social media and further website updates as well as personal communication where this is appropriate. Please stay safe.

Baily Garner are proud to be members of the Consultant Thought Leadership Group, a group of Chartered Surveyors, Employers Agents and Project Managers that have got together to help drive quality and change within the construction industry through collaboration and knowledge sharing. The attached open letter to all our clients discusses the impact of Covid-19 on our industry and discusses some potential ways through

• contractual obligations,
• recording best where we are now for when we have to return to sites
• maintaining cashflow

It is the first of a number of thought pieces that we will share openly.

Purpose

In addition to our Business Continuity Policies, we are doing the following in order to to deal with the 2020 Covid-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak. Due to the changing nature of the risks, it is a plan that is subject to regular review and change.

What is Baily Garner Doing to Minimise Risk…Generally?

We are following Government Guidelines and implementing our own business continuity procedures around this advice

This has included

• Promoting a considered and responsible approach at all times so that we preserve the health and safety of all our staff and stakeholders and manage our response proportionately.
• Communicating with employees, partner organisations and clients to provide all relevant information that they might need to limit infection spread during the outbreak.
• Senior management meeting regularly at both strategic and operational levels to ensure that emerging risks and all potential threats to maintaining a full service during the incident are identified and mitigated as practically as possible to ensure a safe working environment for our staff and as high a level of practical consultancy service as is possible for our clients.
• Gearing our IT response to maximise our ability to continue working using remote working technology.
• Encouraging our staff to raise all concerns openly and reasserting our flexible working capability into working practices .

…and Specifically?

We review the government website every day and implement any changes to best practice recommended within the guidance

We have a visible and constantly updated area on our intranet home page with links to all the necessary guidance

Our Partners, HR and Group Managers are actively managing their teams in terms of potential risks and are available to advise and discuss with staff all concerns at any time.

Hand-washing and more visible general sanitation guidance has been increased in our workplaces with onsite posters in toilet areas, hand sanitisers around the office and regular dialogue with onsite cleaning staff about any additional requirements during this period.
We have published specific guidance on the details of symptoms, reducing the risk of spreading the virus as well as responding to staff questions through an FAQ site.

We are checking with our clients and partners that their own contingency plans are practical and fit for purpose.

Updated Friday 13 March

We today provided some additional suggestions, considerations and commentary to our clients on our plans to maintain continuity of site work during the current Covid-19 crisis. You can find a note from our Managing Partner Continuity of Site Operations during the Covid-19 Delay Phase  and a more detailed appendix 2020-03-12 Appendix to Generic Note.

 

Following some changes to email settings made in a Microsoft update in January we are encountering a higher than usual number of mail delivery issues when sending and receiving emails from clients. If this is/has affected you, here’s some detail you should share with your email service provider or IT team so that they can liaise with our IT team to resolve the issue https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/use-dmarc-to-validate-email. .

Baily Garner sends an email to you and you don’t seem to receive it.

This is because your email server is rejecting the email and is either referring it to your spam folder or just blocking completely (with no bounce-back message being sent to alert the sender).

If you encounter this, (and obviously you will only know there is a problem if Baily Garner staff alert you to this) Baily Garner’s IT team can provide you with the exact time and date the email was ‘delivered’ to give to your IT team and they can liaise with them to help resolve the issue.

 

You send an email to Baily Garner that doesn’t get through

This is because (getting a bit technical here) your DKIM/SPF data settings are invalid and are not being authenticated by our email server.

These settings exist to help verify that the email is definitely from the person purporting to send the email and not an impersonator or hacker

In all instances, BG’s settings will mean a ‘message delivery failure’ bounce -back will be sent to the sender. If you receive one of these messages please take it to your IT team who should be able to amend the settings to enable future emails to be sent to BG without issue.

 

We apologise for the inconvenience this is causing but are happy to help resolve any issues.

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We are excited to announce that Tops Club has been shortlisted for a Housing Essex Excellence Award, Baily Garner provided Quantity Surveying services to the residential project. We have been nominated for the 2nd category – Best Housing Schemes Under 50 homes. The awards ceremony will be held on the 10th of October.

Autumn is always a busy period for university careers fairs – we’ve been travelling across the country talking to students about our Year Out and Graduate opportunities and have received some great feedback so far from Anglia Ruskin, Oxford Brookes and Nottingham Trent universities.

Here’s where you will find us in the next few weeks:

Wednesday 7 November: 

• Brighton University and Sussex University (come and say hello to Os Kamil and Kayhan Rasit)
• Sheffield Hallam University (Peter Fisher will be answering your questions)
• Birmingham City University (come and say hello to Laura Ward)

Tuesday 13 November: 

• University of Reading (Meet Zach and Dilraj on Stand 17 between 11 am and 2 pm)

Tuesday 20 November: 

• South Bank University (Dan Brownlee and Rob Tyler are teaming up for this event).

The Technical Stuff

Baily Garner have introduced digitally signed pdf documents using a 1024bit encryption public key infrastructure (PKI) certificate issued to Baily Garner from VeriSign. The certificates are held on a Class 2 crypto device, with access being controlled via a microsoft active directory authentication using a Strong Password Policy. What this means is that you have the peace of mind to know that signer’s digital identity is legitimate.

The ‘signature’ will appear on each document in a similar looking format and will include the name of the authoriser, the date and time the document was signed and a web link to this page to help explain digital signatures, see example

This gives you the assurance that the information has not been altered since it was authorised, as any modification made to the document after signing will invalidate the signature, and acrobat reader will allow you to see what was actually signed (the original document).

For more information see http://www.adobe.com/security/digsig.html