December 2017

• Permanent link to “A Very Merry Christmas”
• Permanent link to “Cricket in Newenden”

• It's beginning to...

  The offices will be taking a midwinter rest over Christmas and the New Year. Friday 22nd Dec will be the last working day of the year, and we re-open on Tuesday 2 January at 8am sharp!

  Permanent link to “It's beginning to look a lot like...”
• Permanent link to “New websites on their way...”
• Permanent link to “Winter Wonderland?”
• Permanent link to “BALI Awards event - a review”
• Permanent link to “World Soil Day”
• Permanent link to “BALI Awards 2017 - the results”

November 2017

• BALI Awards

  On Friday, it's time for the annual BALI National Landscape Awards - the main awards event in the industry. The lunch and awards presentation are held at the Great Room, Grosvenor House and apparently, all tickets are sold out. The Great Room is one of the biggest venues in London, with a seating capacity of 1500+, so that gives an idea of the scale of this event. Emma, Drew, Alex and I are hosting a table for a small number of friends in the business. For me, it will be an occasion to meet some more industry figures and at least exchange business cards with them - although I suspect the sound level will prevent any major marketing deals being done! Expect tweets on the day and a full report here, next week.

  Permanent link to “BALI Awards”

• Sand, silt and...

  First in an occasional series of definitions A great deal of this business is about soil, and the wondrous many varieties thereof. To understand the differences, we shall have to dig a bit deeper (sorry) and take a look at some defining characteristics. In general terms, the solid content of soil is a mixture of mineral particles and organic matter. (There will be air and water in there too, as anybody buying the stuff by weight will tell you.) For this post, let's look at the mineral contents. The hard, inorganic stuff in soil consists of various kinds of rock, ground down by the action of weather and plant roots over the millennia. Obviously, the type of rock will have an impact on the speed with which the breakdown process progresses, as well as on the ultimate size of the resulting particles and their chemical composition. This is why soil and sand varies from location to location - if the exact specification of your soil is important, then you must look for an analysis of material from your specific source. Mineral particles are defined by their size and are known as sand if bigger than 0.05mm (and if they are bigger than 2mm, then they are gravel and don't belong in soil at all). Particles smaller than sand but bigger than 0.002mm are called silt, whereas even smaller particles are clay. You can easily feel the difference by touch - clay compacts if you squeeze it, silt feels silky and smooth, while sand feels gritty. The mix of sand,silt and clay will determine how well the soil drains - or retains moisture, depending on how you look at it. The bigger the particles, the more free-draining. In the next post in this series, we'll take a look at the organic content of soil.

  Permanent link to “Sand, silt and clay - it's soil in the mind”
• Permanent link to “A day in a grab lorry (3)”
• Permanent link to “A day in a grab lorry (2)”
• Permanent link to “A day in a grab lorry (1)”
• Permanent link to “Report from Futurescape”

• Futurescape 2017

  Next week, we'll be at the Futurescape exhibition at Sandown Park, in Esher - stand 116.

  Permanent link to “Futurescape 2017”

• Are you...

  Logistics router and problem-solver We are looking for a recent graduate (or similar) looking to develop a career in transport management, to join our team in a busy transport office. Must love transport and thrive on fast thinking under pressure. A good understanding of the roads, routes and layout of Southeast England and London is vital, as is the ability to communicate clearly and cheerily with customers and drivers. Salary neg. - apply with CV to peter@bourne.uk.com

  Permanent link to “Are you interested in logistics?”

• Bourne Social

  We are increasingly active on social media. Are you following all our accounts? Here is a quick guide to Bourne online: CompanyTwitterLinkedInFacebookInstagramPinterest Amenity@Bourne_AmenityBourne Amenity Gardenscape @GardenscapeDirGardenscapegardenscapedirectGardenscape Direct Ltd JB & Co@JohnBourne_Co Sport@Bourne_SportBourne Sportbourne_sport

  Permanent link to “Bourne Social”

• We're CLOCS...

  John Bourne & Co, the original company within the Group, providing haulage and lime, compost and other aggregate services throughout the Home Counties, has just been awarded CLOCS Champion status. This sounds like a Good Thing - but what is it? A little bit of investigation is called for. So what is CLOCS? The acronym stands for Construction Logistics and Community Safety. It is an initiative stemming from a report published in 2013 by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) which highlighted the road safety problems when large construction vehicles operate in close proximity to vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists. A CLOCS community was formed, which published a national standard for improving and promoting road safety within the construction and logistics industry. Haulage operators can demonstrate their commitment to better road safety by signing up to the CLOCS Memorandum of Understanding, and implementing a plan for continuous improvement. Obviously, as JB & Co already are FORS Gold accredited, this helps showing that we take these matters seriously. Having adopted the MoU and an implementation plan, and having been thoroughly assessed over a period of time, we have now been awarded the CLOCS Champion status. Nobody works harder at safety and environmental issues than our transport management team - it's good to see all their efforts rewarded!

  Permanent link to “We're CLOCS Champions!”

• The IOG SALTEX show

  Jonathan, Alex L and I went to the NEC yesterday, for a wander round the SALTEX show It was well attended and the exhibitors we talked to seemed, on balance, quite happy with the proceedings. These days, it feels mostly like an equipment show, with a great deal of impressive machinery for doing various things to unsuspecting grass plants (and to their artificial cousins as well, to be sure). However, there were quite a few of our friends and competitors there and it was good for me to meet them and continue building up an understanding of the industry. The next similar event is BTME in Harrogate on 23-25 January. The one thing that was consistently suggested by the people we met, was that these two events ought to be amalgamated. But of course, it's two different organising associations and, although there is a great deal of overlap between audiences and exhibitors at the two events, there may be a certain amount of institutional pride and prejudice to be overcome in order to merge the events. It was an interesting visit but it's clear that there is no need for us to take a stand there. For one thing, the NEC really isn't a very attractive place. No big exhibition centre really can be - especially not when it is the only really big site in the country. Next week Jonathan, Peter and Richard W will be off to Cologne (for the FSB fair). Every major German city has an exhibition centre like that - it is country where they take trade fairs seriously!

  Permanent link to “The IOG SALTEX show”

October 2017

• The Bourne Group...

  To celebrate 70 years of The Bourne Group of companies (Bourne Amenity, Bourne Sport, John Bourne & Co. and Gardenscape) we made a short film. All shot at our site in Newenden, it shows some of the people that make our firm work!

  Permanent link to “The Bourne Group 70th Anniversary Film”

• John Bourne & Co...

  Incredible to think, it's seventy years since John Bourne set up his lime-spreading business at Newenden. Today, it is a flourishing business with 65 employees, four distinct operating companies and already moving on to the third generation Bournes in charge. So it was definitely time to throw a party. The venue was the venerable Spa Hotel in Tunbridge Wells, where the staff with spouses, partners and generally Most Significant Others were treated to drinks and amuses-bouches, an excellent dinner and entertainment ranging from Jonathan's keynote speech (if that is the right word for a wide-roaming historical treatise - with photos) through a new corporate video through some excellent - and loud - dance music. We all got home eventually but I bet I wasn't the only one to be grateful for the extra hour lie-in resulting from the clocks going back... There should be photos coming in a later post!

  Permanent link to “John Bourne & Co 70th anniversary”