Site managers reap their rewards [
IN JUNE THE National Housebuilding Council (NHBC) announced the winners in the first round of its annual Pride in the Job awards. Now in its 36th year, Pride in the Job celebrates the exceptional contribution that site managers make in creating homes of outstanding quality. The first round of the competition this year saw the top 445 site managers honoured with Quality Awards for their dedication to building such homes. As well as undergoing spot checks on the day-to-day running of the sites, each site manager is assessed across 37 areas of site management, including their technical knowledge, consistency in the build process and the quality controls they have in place. With more than 16,000 site managers competing for the awards, this year’s Quality Award winners have been hand-picked for their excellent standards on site.
Mike Quinton, chief executive of NHBC, commented: “Congratulations to all the 2016 Quality Award winners: the strength of this year’s entries, coupled with the judges’ long and hard deliberations over selecting 445 winners from 16,000 site managers, should give great pride to them all and their teams.” In the following pages we will be looking at a number of winners from one of the regions of the NHBC that receives less attention than perhaps it deserves – Northern Ireland, which also includes the Isle of Man. The region is characterised by a predominance of small, local developers – a fact attested to by the fact that this year the region’s 25 Quality Award winners represent a remarkable 20 companies! We open the feature, however, with a look at an out-of-the-ordinary, award-winning development in Scotland. q
Who wants to live on a country estate? We do – when Jeff’s in charge! [SITUATED ON THE north bank of the River
Tweed in Berwickshire is Coldstream, a historic Scottish Border town. There, on the edge of the Hirsel Estate is Leet Haugh, a new residential development that is one of a kind. Leet Haugh comprises a mix of two, three and four-bedroom homes which are specifically designed to suit modern living within the structure of a ‘country estate’. The architectural style and design reflects the regional design vernacular, but with the use of some contemporary influence in the specification and detailing to ensure that homes provide traditional qualities with the benefits of modern energy efficient living. That ‘estate’ structure provides a range of accommodation from ‘gate lodges’ in a bungalow style to ‘farm houses’ and ‘factors houses’ in bungalows and detached one-and-a-half and two-storey homes around the village green. The Courtyard is a mixture of 24 detached ‘lodge houses’, town-houses and ‘stable mews’
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built round a grassed courtyard, while the Village Green is a stunning development of 16 three and four-bedroom detached homes looking out onto a green of almost an acre.
Award-winning Jeff Loughlin
The development is being built by Hudson Hirsel, which is a partnership between local developer Jamie Hudson and the Hirsel Estate itself. The Hirsel Estate is one of the Douglas and Angus Estates, the DouglasHome family estate company. The family, an amalgam of two of the great Border Families – Home and Douglas – also own the Douglas Estate in South Lanarkshire, where unbroken stewardship goes back for nearly 1,000 years. That sense of pride in the development’s heritage is being maintained by the build team. Hudson Hirsel announced with great pride that Jeff Loughlin, the site manager at Leet Haugh, has been recognised by NHBC with a Pride in the Job award. The award is seen as a visible demonstration of Hudson Hirsel’s overall commitment to quality and the firm is extremely proud of it. Jamie Hudson declared: “Jeff has been with Hudson Hirsel for over 10 years and