Leisure centre construction agreed

Willmott Dixon, a leading independent construction and property services company, has been appointed on the development of the new £21m Morpeth Leisure Centre.

The leisure centre will include a six-lane swimming pool with spectator gallery, a learner pool, spa facilities, a four-court sports hall, a new 100 station fitness suite, a dedicated cycling studio, large fitness studios, a cafe and soft play area.  The plans also incorporate a new community services hub, a customer service centre and a new adult learning facility.

The development is being funded by Northumberland County Council. Pandemic restrictions allowing, construction is hoped to start in November and complete by Summer 2022. 

Glen Sanderson, leader of Northumberland County Council, said: “The new centre will be a real asset for the town and a wonderful place for residents and visitors to enjoy for many years to come. 

“When work does commence, Willmott Dixon will be implementing strict social distancing to ensure the health and safety of their staff and the wider community is not compromised in any way and that all measures on site are compliant with government guidelines and Public Health England guidance.”

Anthony Dillon, managing director for Willmott Dixon in the north, added: “As one of the UK’s largest constructors of leisure centres, we will be bringing all our experience to ensure this is a fantastic facility for local people, as well as ensuring that we use local companies wherever possible to help support the local economy and create jobs in Morpeth.”

Many construction contractors and clients require contractor staff to hold and display Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) smart-cards, which prove their qualifications, before allowing them on site.

Here at Time and Attendance North East, we are an IT partner of the CSCS through our parent company, Tensor plc. This means that we can provide seamless integration between the CSCS smartcard and our WinTA.NET software, which provides time management, visitor/contractor management and fire/evacuation roll-call systems.

The integration takes the end-user form of a CSCS “card wizard”. This set of rules allows a company to quickly grant construction contractors recognition by and access to our hardware, such as clocking terminals, turnstiles, and door controllers. The wizard will run one of three scenarios when giving access rights to contractors. These are:

  • Contractors who are completely new to the system.
  • Contractors whose name exists on the system but their CSCS card has not been entered.
  • Contractors who are fully recorded on the system and have used their card at other sites, but are new to this particular site.

For each different scenario the wizard will guide the user through the enrolment procedure. The result is that:

  • The contractor’s CSCS card is read (using a USB card reader attached to a Tensor.NET Client PC)
  • Details are extracted from the card to update the contractor’s details within the system
  • Options such as a company, site, shift group and department are assigned to the cardholder

To make it easier to include new contractors in your site’s existing health and safety and security procedures, please contact us today. We can handle any size site: our Enterprise software is able to perform for global, multi-site corporations with thousands of employees/users, while our Start edition helps small businesses with less than 50 users.

Please get in touch for more information and for a detailed quote.