The board of directors headed out of the office last month to hold their monthly board meeting on site at Salford Cathedral, it was certainly a different scenery to the usual head office walls.

The beautifully decorated chancel ceiling was on show, some of the stain glass had been restored and in place and statues have been cleaned ready for painting, with more work to go to the Cathedral the board will be back in 2025 for another meeting.

Even the site team are now a part of history with their names delicately added to the chancel ceiling.

Restoration work continues at Salford Cathedral with decorating to the Chancel ceiling now underway. Delicate star detailing has been stencilled and gold leafing applied to stonework.

We have also been able to leave our mark, we have been honoured with our own stencilled star, a lasting memory of the time Simpson has spent helping to restore this amazing Cathedral.

Simpson have recently completed two more LFC projects for Sainsbury’s Argos, at Trafford Park, Manchester and Bedford. These are small distribution hubs, known as Local Fulfilment Centres, which support the nearby Argos Store in Stores.

Trafford Park – Manchester LFC

We originally completed the Trafford Park LFC in September 2022 and 2 years later we were back to extend the stock capacity of the unit by installing a full mezzanine across the warehouse along with multiple goods lifts, sets of stairs and parcel chutes. Along with the thousands of additional shelving bays to fill the new space. The challenge was that Sainsburys needed to keep their full operation live and without disruption throughout our construction period. To achieve this Simpson needed to problem solve and agree a suitable phasing that maintained the stocking and picking operations of the distribution centre as well as give us suitable working space to safely install the large steel sections of the mezzanine and the high volume of new or relocated racking.

Other challenges were around the need to reroute M&E services to enable us to build the new mezzanine whilst keeping the existing space operational with lighting and heating of the operatives.

Due to the nature of the project a high degree of day to day communication with the client and Ops teams were required and our site team built excellent relationships and received fantastic feedback upon completion.

Bedford LFC

This is a much smaller LFC project than we usually complete that had its own unique challenges. We took 2 small areas in an existing, large regional distribution centre and created an outbound / inbound area as well as office and canteen spaces. We needed to carry out the works around ongoing distribution operations and once again a high level of coordination with the Argos operations team and DHL network team needed to be achieved. The client was extremely cost constrained and Simpson worked with them to deliver excellent quality as well as an increased scope but also keeping within the original budget. The Simpson team once again received excellent feedback showing that we are the preferred choice on this workstream for Sainsbury’s.

On Saturday 14 members of the Simpson team took on the 10mile Yorkshire Tough Mudder at Broughton Hall in Skipton. There was certainly a lot of mud, sweat, but thankfully no tears, more importantly a lot of fun was definitely had.

The team did absolutely fantastic and all in the aid of raising money for charity. An amazing £2,000 has been raised so far for Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity and Katharine House Hospice.

A huge well done to everyone who took part, a big thank you to everyone for your support and a huge thank you to everyone who donated.

We had the pleasure of participating in the recent Marks and Spencer Charity Football Tournament hosted at Powerleague in Leeds. This event brought together organisations within M&S’s construction and fit-out contractor supply chain to raise donations and support for Youngminds.

YoungMinds is a leading UK charity championing the well-being and mental health of children and young people. Its initiatives and support strategies aim to help children and young people overcome life's adversities and succeed in life. To find out more about YoungMinds please follow this link: https://lnkd.in/davk7pCG‍

The event has raised £6,500 so far, a fantastic achievement for everyone involved and our thanks to Marc Simpson for organising! Our team also had a positive outcome, coming away with a trophy on the day!

Works at the cathedral are progressing well with the start of the reinstallation of the conserved stained glass by Barley studio to the East chancel.

The decorative scheme has started to the Chancel ceiling with Bernard Watson undertaking this element.

Steel supports have been craned into position to carry the ornate 500kg light fittings over the font and blessed sacrament chapel.

The scaffolding to the main tower is ready to start stripping now that the high-level conservation works are complete.

We have started to replaster the walls with traditional lime plaster to the East of the cathedral.