Survival Systems International UK (SSI) has completed the refurbishment of three 50-man lifeboat capsules from the Global Sante Fe Galaxy rig at its UK base at Great Yarmouth.
All three were transported together by road from Scotland to be worked on simultaneously in Norfolk while the North Sea rig was being revamped in the Nigg fabrication yard on the Cromarty Firth.
“We were delighted to be given the work by Transocean, the world’s largest drilling contractor, and even happier to report that we finished on schedule within a tight deadline,” said Andy Dickson, SSI UK’s operations manager.
“It’s meant the workshop has been particularly busy with all three capsules being worked on alongside another major contract.”
Every component from each of the capsules was thoroughly checked through SSI’s ‘traffic light’ assessment – green for OK, yellow for potential refurbishment and red for replacement. Safety testing was also incorporated into the six-week project.
“It was ideal for us to get the job as the capsules were all built by our parent company in the United States so we were very familiar with their design, equipment and layout,” said Andy.
The GSF Galaxy, a harsh environment deepwater jack-up platform, is undergoing a three-month refurbishment, the first oil rig for nine years at the Nigg yard.
Attleborough based renewable heating expert Finn Geotherm, has been shortlisted in four categories in the prestigious National ACR & Heat Pump Awards.
The sought-after National ACR & Heat Pump Awards celebrate excellence in innovation, projects, installations and environmental successes in the air conditioning and refrigeration and heat pump industries. They bring together manufacturers, end users, distributors, heating engineers, ACR contractors and consultants from across the country.
Finn Geotherm has been shortlisted in four categories:
Heat Pump Installer of the Year
Domestic Ground Source Project – for the first installation of a communal ground source heat pump for domestic use in the East of England by housing association Flagship Group. The system installed at Orchard Close in Watton, is delivering domestic heating and hot water for 30 flats. It has cut Flagship customers’ heating bills by two thirds, creating annual savings of hundreds of pounds.
Non-domestic Ground Source Project – also for the Flagship Group district heating scheme at Orchard Close, Watton.
Domestic Air Source Project – for a heat pump system installed at a South Norfolk home. The installation was the second air source project completed by Finn Geotherm for this customer when they moved into a new house.
Guy Ransom, commercial director at Finn Geotherm, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have been shortlisted for four awards in the National ACR & Heat Pump Awards, which recognise the country’s most significant heating companies and projects. We are particularly over the moon to have been shortlisted twice for the district heating project at Flagship, which is both a testament to the forward-thinking strategic approach of Flagship and the hard work and skill of the team at Finn Geotherm in delivering the best possible solution for the organisation and its tenants. We thoroughly enjoyed working together on this project and hope we can soon be celebrating its success together too!”
Winners of the National ACR & Heat Pump Awards will be announced on 18th January 2018 at a black tie event in Liverpool.
We are very excited to announce that the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and development teams at Tudor Lodge Consultants are working with the Southdown Gun Club to improve their online presence and positioning on Google Search. An award-winning gun club and shooting school, the Southdown Gun Club are a very unique client with exciting products on offer.
In addition to their West Sussex shooting club and school, they also have a well-renowned shop known as the ‘Gun Room’ which sells all of the necessary and desired additions for amateur and professional shooters. Southdown Gun Club offer a variety of shooting experiences which includes clay pigeon shooting, skeet shooting, target shooting and some truly unique day experiences such as archery and axe throwing.
However, they approached the team at Tudor Lodge Consultants with the problem that as the premier shooting ground of West Sussex, not enough people and customers have been finding their website and engaging with their offerings. We have therefore devised a comprehensive SEO and technical website strategy which together are already showing signs of progress and the huge potential of the Gun Club and its adjoining shop’s website.
The Challenges Faced
The Southdown Gun Club website, being built on WordPress has a huge degree of potential. However, although the site’s appearance and feel are very good, serving customers superbly, the technical aspects of the website need much work. The website was not being properly crawled and ranked by Google and other search engines and therefore, the Southdown Gun Club were not enjoying the fruits of their success and the huge opportunities for customers to find them.
Moreover, the site was not configured to run and be engaged with via mobile and tablet devices, a now crucial Google ranking factor. The website has also traditionally not been targeting potential and prospective customers by targeting keyword and relevant brand and generic search terms.
What We Are Doing
As a result of the challenges faced by Southdown Gun Club, our team have been working to improve a variety of aspects of the site and its online offerings including:
– How the site is crawled by Google
– Site speed
– Mobile functionality
– Targeting of specifically relevant keywords and search terms
– Improved user experience and user journeys
– Improved site architecture
We initially had a detailed consultation with the client and have now devised their keyword strategy after performing in-depth keyword research and analysis. We have used this information and data to help with our initiation of the implementation of the website’s meta data. The meta data is one of the most important factors for Google as it allows pages and their content to be read, ranked and properly ‘understood,’ allowing for better rankings and positions online.
We have also been working with the development team to improve site speed, which is on the up. Southdown Gun Club are currently enjoying site speeds of 71% for mobile and 95% for desktop. This is a very important factor as it allows easy navigation and better user journeys throughout the site.
Further to this, we are also performing a full audit of images on the site, compressing those that are too large to further increase the site’s speed. Whilst the Southdown Gun Club have an adequate link profile, we have also been required to remove an array of toxic links from the backlink profile of the website and we will be working on an improved and logical strategy of building strong, relevant and clean links that point to the Southdown Gun Club website; acting as a strong trust signal for Google and other search engines of the relevant and importance of the website.
Southdown Gun Club have already at this early stage seen their website achieve top 5 positions on Google for the competitive terms of ‘gun clubs’ and ‘gun club,’ some of the most competitive and most popular search terms in the industry.
We are looking forward to building on the progress and positive outlook for the Southdown Gun Club, takin their site to the lofty heights of Google’s page 1 for further terms.
We are very excited to be able to showcase our IT services and solutions within a brand new website.
The Breakwater team worked closely with local design agency, Solid Block, to create a site that clearly outlined how we support clients and their IT systems; delivering greater value from the technology they invest in and providing long-term business growth.
Our approach to delivering IT is to focus on clients’ specific requirements and the results they want to achieve – increased productivity, reduced risk, seamless scalability.
Within our new website we reveal the core components that are the building blocks for future growth. ‘A Platform to Power your Business’ is essentially a secure system that forms the basis of a client’s IT network. We have taken our collective knowledge and experience to provide IT support based on a shared, and tried and tested, understanding of which solutions work well together. Every component we recommend has a deliberate place and purpose and is proactively managed to ensure systems run smoothly.
By outsourcing your IT services to Breakwater, you receive essential solutions as standard – including backup, anti-virus, email security, device maintenance and licensing compliance. We also offer consultative and specialist project work, innovative backup and disaster recovery, cloud solutions, telecoms and CCTV services.
We hope you enjoy taking a look around our new site and learning more about the way in which IT can power your business – keep an eye out for our rather addictive new game and see if you can top the leaderboard!
Norfolk Chamber member Human Capital Department – the people management and development experts in East Angia – have released a free questionnaire which enables companies to verify whether or not they are complaint with the varous rules and regulations relating to people management and development.
Once the questionnaire has been completed human capital department are able to produce a short report which uses a trafic light system – red, amber or green – to highlight any areas of possible concern.
“The people management and development space is highly regulated and continuously changing – recent examples include General Data Protection Regulations [GDPR] and Supreme Court Ruling that makes Employment Tribunal Fees unlawful – and it is difficult for organisations to stay on top of these changes, especially if they do not have a specialist personnel manager in-house.” said Peter Lawrence, Director and Founder of Human Capital Department.
Human Capital Department can help by providing this simple questionnaire and free report and by providing guidance on any areas which the report identifys as [amber or red] of being of concern.
LIFT is a grants scheme run by Norfolk County Council and funded by the European Social Fund that helps people build their skills and find work, and supports local businesses in offering work trials. Our new website promotes the programme and makes it easy for applicants to find the information they need. Another “intelligent website design”.
The Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) team at Tudor Lodge are pleased to announce that we are working with SPF Private Clients (https://spf.co.uk/), who have recently celebrated their 20th birthday. SPF were born out of Savills Property Finance and underwent a management buyout and an exciting rebrand.
Our team have been working closely with SPF on their online presence, discoverability and their brand exposure to a far-reaching target audience. SPF Private Clients provide 4 distinct areas of expertise and service which are: mortgages, insurance, wealth management and commercial finance. Each of these areas are broken down by SPF into verticals that are marketed to their client base and customers.
Unlike typical brokerages and financial services providers, SPF are able to arrange the best solutions for each case and client on a case by case basis. This means that clients of SPF are afforded world-class expertise, high levels of service and exclusive products across the relevant markets. SPF have however had their fair share of challenges online and this is one of the reasons why they have brought in our team.
Having rebranded in the last decade, SPF have seen the need to build a new online brand presence and as part of this target a number of new and previously ranked terms. This is in addition to the desired improvements they continue to seek for their site.
Starting Points
Starting on SPF’s website allowed us to discover that a number of SEO basics had not been fully or properly implemented from past work on the site. This included the following factors, all of which are crucial SEO ranking factors:
– Meta Data
– H Title Use
– Schema
– Backlinking
– Site Speed and Response Times
We have and continue to address all of these points on an ongoing basis. Their previous meta data was not properly optimised with meta titles being too long or duplicated across the site and meta descriptions being absent altogether. We therefore cleaned up all of their meta data, insuring every page has its own data and unique offering. This has already seen various positive shifts on Google Search Results.
SPF were also not making proper and optimised use of their H titles. H titles are a critical SEO ranking factor as they tell Google what the on-page content is about and what is to come. As with the meta data, we have fine-tuned and optimised all of their H titles, paying particular attention to their H1 titles (as these are afforded the highest priority.)
Schema has also been fully rolled out across the site and this allows search engines to better ‘understand’ what is on each website page and the context.
SPF enjoy a strong presence in the media and they have a number of high value and strong backlinks. This includes many links from the likes of world-renowned industry bodies, new outlets and industry experts. However, many of these have not provided SPF with the correctly optimised backlink and so we have commenced a reclamation, reaching out and reclaiming these links for SPF’s online benefit.
We have also worked with SPF’s existing developers on the speed of the website which is important for user experience as well as mobile and tablet use. This has seen the site jump to more than 70% site speed across all platforms.
The Results
Although this project is in its early stages and there is still much more work to come, SPF have already seen numerous high competition phrases reach the lofty heights of page 1 of Google. This includes the likes of ‘private finance,’ ‘residential mortgages’ and others. Building on this progress and that of the work to come, we are looking forward to building a strong, fruitful and successful partnership with SPF Private Clients for the future.
The Brancaster House team temporarily traded tax efficiency for turbo slides as we took on the Inflatable 5K at the Norfolk Showground, raising money for Priscilla Bacon Hospice.
As independent financial advisers in Norfolk, we’re used to helping people navigate long-term plans, but nothing prepared us for the short-term shock of being launched headfirst into an oversized bouncy tunnel at 8.30am on a Saturday. Still, whether you’re managing market volatility or unexpected air-filled obstacles, resilience (and teamwork) always pays off.
Why We Did It And Why Priscilla Bacon Hospice Matters to Us
We’ve long been proud supporters of Priscilla Bacon Hospice. If you haven’t seen it yet, we wrote about exactly why here:
Taking part in the Inflatable 5K brought those reasons to life:
Team unity: Much like pension planning, inflatable obstacle courses require strategy, encouragement and sometimes pushing someone (gently) in the right direction.
Community spirit: As a financial planning firm in Norwich, we’re committed to supporting the people and causes that make Norfolk special.
Real impact: Every bounce, wobble and dramatic fall contributed to raising funds for vital end-of-life care.
What the Day Reminded Us
Whether you’re facing financial uncertainty or an inflatable slide that’s far steeper than it looked online, having the right support makes all the difference.
At Brancaster House Financial Planning, that’s what we’re here for; helping individuals and families across Norfolk feel more confident, more secure and more prepared for the future.
Want Help Getting Your Finances in Shape?
If you’re looking for:
Financial advice in Norwich
An independent financial adviser / advisor in Norfolk
Or simply someone to help you understand your pensions, investments or retirement options…
Enterprise-Level Print Security and Easy On-Site Service Multilayered, enterprise-level print security, including HDD overwrite and data encryption, secures critical business information. Authentication The X3280 Series supports authentication through 802.1x, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Lightweight Direct Access Protocol (LDAP) and Kerberos technologis, along with network use authentication at the control panel Job Protection Protect print jobs with secure print, encrypted scanning, digital signatures and job logs. Hard Disk Protection Safeguard the hard disk with encryption and overwrite capabilities. Network Security / Protocols Secure your company network and protocols through protocol and port disablement, IP and MAC address filtering, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Transport Layer Security (TLS) and other network security technologies.
Leathes Prior’s Charity of the Year, OPEN Youth Trust has successfully submitted an entry to this year’s Aviva Community Fund for a minibus to support their outreach team. The 15-seater, second-hand minibus with diabled access will be used to collect young people, in and around Norfolk from schools and Youth clubs so that they can avail of all the activities and classes at OPEN. OPEN Youth Trust was established in 2006 to give young people in Norfolk the life skills and confidence to maximise their potential. They now make a positive difference to the lives of over 4,500 young people each year through their drop-in youth hub in the city centre, workshops, gym, dance studio and climbing wall. OPEN offer volunteering and mentoring workshops designed to get young people work ready and to help them to get to grips with the day to day challenges of independent living. The service is free of charge to young people and funded through their commercial activities. However, young people in rural areas of Norfolk are somewhat isolated and can miss out on the opportunities OPEN provides to get out and about, make friends and develop new activities and passions. OPEN want to be able to engage with these young people and offer them somewhere to go, someone to talk to, and something to do. However, Norfolk is a rural and sparsely populated county and it remains difficult to engage young people in geographically isolated areas. Transport links are poor in most of the county and, often, young people aged between 11-19 cannot afford public transport. Those who have physical disabilities can face further challenges. Gaining funds for the minibus would mean that OPEN can make the trip to the young people and pick them up outside of school hours, allowing them full access to their services before taking them home safely in the evening. This would have a dramatic and positive effect on the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable young people across our county. This is what one young person said to OPEN Youth Trust to describe how he feels about wanting to get to OPEN and his struggles due to the lack of public transport: “I would LOVE to be able to go to OPEN in the evenings. They do really cool stuff, it is great fun and loads of my Norwich friends go there. I really feel like I am missing out but I have no way of actually getting there, so please vote for OPEN and make this happen so that I can join my friends”. OPEN has successfully got through stage one in the bidding process which is now open to the public to vote. Voting is easy; just follow this link register an email address or login with your Facebook account and cast your votes – you have until midday 21st November 2017.
Active Norfolk’s Wrap Up and Step Out walking challenge is back this year to encourage you and your colleagues to reduce stress, improve wellbeing and get active by heading out for a walk this November.
Not only are we privileged enough to live in one of the most naturally beautiful parts of the world here in Norfolk, but now just by going out and exploring it, Active Norfolk is giving you the chance to win a host of wonderful prizes by logging your activity and sending in your photographs.
Whether your walk consists of a lunchtime stroll around town, a weekend ramble through the forest or a hike along coastal clifftops, you could be in with a chance of winning the prizes, including Osprey Daysacks, Klean Kanteen drinks bottles and cinema vouchers, simply by putting one foot in front of the other.
Plus, an additional weekly prize is up for grabs throughout November for the best photos from your walks that capture the beauty of Norfolk in autumn.
People Management and Development disruptor Human Capital Department offer a recruitment service which is different to what is typically offered by recruitment and employment agencies…
“Our pricing model is different – rather than charging 10% or 15% of starting salary we charge a Fixed Fee of £995 for each recruitment assignment” said Peter Lawrence, Director of Human Capital Department.
The quality of service we provide is also assured – we are a member of the Chamber of Commerce and our consultants are individual members of the Chartered Insitute of Personnel and Development [CIPD], which is our quality mark and means we are qualified to guide employers to ensure that they adhere to rules and regulations and apply best practice recruitment and selection processes and procedures.
We go the extra mile, as well as conducting the initial pre-screening interviews and providing a short-list of suitable candidates, we can sit in on recruitment interviews if required, and can take up references to complete the process.
Once you have the right person on board we can also advise on Induction and Performance Management ensuring things go smoothly from day one.