Category: News

In September 2021, Watson & Sole Associates celebrated its fiftieth year of trading. Who would have imagined that I would be sitting at home in my office writing this, having spent the majority of the last eighteen months working from home? That certainly wouldn’t have been possible fifty years ago.

For those of you who may not know our background the company was originally started back in 1971 by Tony Watson and John Sole, who saw a gap in the market for this specialist service. The majority of the work in those days came from Matthew Hall who were then located at Great Dover Street in London and Waddon in Croydon. This was mainly due to John Sole’s contacts as he had worked for Matthew Hall for many years.

The business grew slowly with work coming from other Contractors such as Haden Young, Briggs & Forrester, How Engineering and Drake & Scull to name a few and Commissioning & Testing Services who were based in Rickmansworth, now long gone.

Tony was a keen amateur rally driver and managed to convince John that buying a Ford RS 2000 Escort as a Company car was a good idea. I think John’s view changed when Tony wrote the car off one weekend at a rally. Tony Watson was an extremely good engineer and was very interested in Controls and by 1983 he left the business to seek pastures new.

In 1989 Derek Howard was appointed to the board and continued to move the business forward and developed a few more work streams such as setting up planned maintenance systems for Clients such as the BBC, BP and The Prison Service. I joined the Company in 1985 and was fortunate enough to have Derek as a mentor whom I am very grateful to some 35 years later. I still quote some of his sayings now like “you must have a defendable position”.

In 1985 we didn’t even have a computer, the engineers wrote in pencil on pre-printed templates for the ladies to type up using golf ball typewriters. I can recall the company purchasing our first computer, an IBM with the small green screen and a massive 10 mb hard disk. This was purchased in order for us to implement the setting up of a Comac PPM system for BP who then resided in Britannic House just near Moorgate tube station. That along with a fax machine which soon followed was the start of technology entering the business.

In those days it was normal to produce four or even six hard copies of the Manuals along with full size hard copy Record Drawings. I can vividly recall the smell of the ammonia dyeline drawings that were often sent unfolded and we would sit on the floor folding them correctly to fit in an A4 plastic wallet.

The business continued to grow steadily and probably one of the biggest defining moments in the history of the Company was when Derek secured the production of the manuals for the Barbican development. The reason for this was that this is where our unique system based format was born, which has been our USP ever since.

Obviously there have been other significant moments over the last fifty years such as the development of our LAN based documentation solution Inteli-Scan by Neil Ambler in 1997 which then developed into the web based solution in 2003.

Gone are the days of making up four hard copies which often comprised of 60 to 80 books in a set.

Neil and I completed a Management buyout in 2006 which allowed John to retire to his golf and Derek to his music, love of motorcycle racing and painting.

In 2016 Lisa McLaughlin and Sam Denton were appointed Board Directors to support the business’ evolution seen over the preceding 45 years.

Here we are now in 2021, working from home with projects throughout the UK, Europe and a few other countries around the world. Technology has had a massive influence on how we produce and deliver our product whether it be Inteli-Scan for a commercial development or our Home User Guide App for the residential market. Who knows what the next fifty years will bring?

Finally, I would like to thank all of our Clients for their support over the years and our staff who have contributed to us achieving this significant milestone of fifty years in business.

Here’s to the next fifty!

Many Thanks

Paul Vermont

Managing Director

Watson & Sole is delighted to be teaming up with Jigsaw4U as the company’s chosen charity for 2019/2020 which means the company and staff will be busy fundraising and raising awareness of the very important work that Jigsaw4U does with thousands of children, young people and parents every year.

Jigsaw4u is a well-established South-West London based children’s charity supporting children and young people with complex social, emotional and bereavement issues.

Like many others charities, Jigsaw4U has seen cuts to its funding budget over recent years and Watson & Sole aim to make a difference in a variety of ways including contributing to some potentially exciting capital projects as well as day-to-day necessities like books, resources for support or special activities like music or art therapy.

We are only just starting out on this charity sponsorship/relationship* and are excited to see what we can achieve together over the next 12 months, so watch this space.   And if you feel you can help with anything we are doing please let us know – we’d be delighted to hear from you.

For more information about Jigsaw4U you can visit their website www.jigsaw4u.org.uk

If you think you can help us make a difference please contact;  Sally Hull at our Head Office

W&S are proud to be EY (Ernst & Young ) Record Documentation specialist.

Since early 2017 contractors carrying out minor or major projects to the EY portfolio are required to work with W&S in order to maintain the documentation requirements consistently from building to building.

During 2018 many legacy contracts have been incorporated into Inteli-Scan as a central, coordinated, secure and auditable library for each of the Buildings EY occupy.

Inteli-Scan is a powerful database that uses a variety of attributes of each of the documents to permit a number of user definable search routines to locate, filter and group information quickly.

The primary search models are:

Inteli-Scan Classic (Classic PC interface)

• Simple Search Inteli-Scan for features of the Building and Services to identify the system/element you are researching and thereby retrieve the documents relating to that system/element.
• Advanced Search Inteli-Scan for Documents by their various attributes including their Originator, Category, Number, Title and Contents.
• Advanced Search Inteli-Scan by Assets to identify what documents relate to them.
• Advanced Search Inteli-Scan by Systems to identify what documents relate to them the systems selected.
• Browse, via a tree view of the documents by Discipline/System, Group/Category and Group/System.

Inteli-Scan Touch (PC Touch Biased Interface)

• Simple Search provides the ability to use keyword searching in all documents on the site and presents a table tiles of the documents
• Browse, via a tiles table view of the documents by Discipline/System, Group/Category and Group/System.

Inteli-Scan Graphic Search

• Where implemented using BIM Models and other graphical tools interfaces.

Inteli-Scan Mobile and Tablet

• Simple Search provides the ability to use keyword searching in all documents on the site and presents a tiles table of the documents.
• Advanced Search Inteli-Scan for Documents by their various attributes including their Originator, Category, Number, Title and Contents.
• Browse, via a tiles table view of the documents by Discipline/System, Group/Category and Group/System.

Watson & Sole have decided this year as part of our Corporate Social Responsibility commitment to support a local charity. The Charity that the staff chose is The Diamond Centre for Disabled Riders, which provides facilities to benefit disabled children and adults by having regular contact with horses.

The Diamond Centre is a unique establishment for riding for the disabled and is known and respected world-wide. It is the only Centre of its kind in the London Region specialising in all fields of riding for the disabled including; dressage, carriage driving, vaulting and hippotherapy.

The Centre relies totally on donations to survive so we have participated in a number of ways to assist them. We have sponsored a horse called Peaches, who is one of the established horses used by both children and adults. We have raised money through a sponsored walk and last Friday we all spent the day working at the Centre to help with various jobs around the site.

It was very enjoyable and by the end of the day we were all exhausted. If you would like to know more about the Centre then please click on the link below.  

www.diamondcentre.org.uk

Who could have foreseen Inteli-Scan holding 1,000,000 documents 15 years ago with the launch of Inteli-Scan on the Web.  In those 15 years we have captured and created the documentation for over 250 sites The exponential growth in document numbers is a reflection of the:

• requirements statutory and contractual exemplified by Health and Safety Files and L2 Log Books
• expectations of FM teams and Project teams for more comprehensive and detailed information to support the operation and maintenance of buildings
• technological advances permitting electronic provision of information
• undertaking updates of information to ensure the information currency. some sites have several versions of files to reflect the changes made to their building

With that many documents on some sites are you missing out because Inteli-Scan has not been fully invested in:

• Could you be audited and found to be lacking in Statutory Documentation because they were not in the scope of the Inteli-Scan Build. Full compliance with statutory obligations, copy of Health and Safety File, L2 Log Book.
• Do you go to Inteli-Scan and find that some of the information you hope to find there was not loaded as a cost saving exercise which decision in hindsight was costly.  Do you have full comprehensive documentation suite including,
  • O&M
  • Drawings
  • Test Data
  • Manufacturers Information
  • All Project and Tenant information
• Do you only have hard copy of Test and Certification as wet signatures were required or static rather than editable drawing files?  Should these now be captured electronically to permit centralised information retrieval and drawing updates.
• Do you review information on Inteli-Scan and question if it is out of date, should Inteli-Scan have been updated for small works and projects.

If your answer to any of these questions is Yes we suggest you contact Inteli-Scan Help Desk Team to find out how your answer could be changed

Following the successful completion of one of the BSF Schools for the Costain / NG Bailey Joint venture, W&S are pleased to announce that they have negotiated with the two organisations to complete a further five schools within the Lewisham area.

Schools are always challenging projects with quite often multiple handovers and tight construction programmes to fit in with the School holiday periods.

Our flexible system approach combined with our web based application INTELI-SCAN, enabled us to efficiently manage the process and meet the challenges of the phased handovers for the multiple schools projects.

Stanhope plc. have been working with Watson & Sole for well over 20 years and engage us to manage the procurement of Record Documentation (theyWRITE) and deliver to their client INTELI-SCAN – the intelligent online Record Documentation System.

Central St. Giles isn’t just an office building.  The mixed use development comprising office space, retail units, restaurants, cafes, residential and outdoor public piazza presented several challenges for contractors to submit their documentation in the most logical  possible format for ongoing use . The floating island of office space and apartments above a lively public piazza will become an exemplar for high-density, mixed-use developments in London.

Using the latest version of INTELI-SCAN, Watson & Sole were able to put to test our new innovative on-line wizards to dramatically speed up the process of uploading contractor Operation & Maintenance documentation to meet the demanding structure of this mixed-use development.

During 2011 Principal Contractor personnel have expressed a preference for the W&S Service and the Inteli-Scan  solution:

“Inteli-Scan  is like other O&M Manual Portals only better.” Sir Robert McAlpine Services Manager

“The Watson and Sole format is clearer than those provided by the O&M Specialist on my past projects.” Services Manager of a Leading International Consultancy and Construction Company

“It is much easier to find documents on Inteli-Scan  than our  Project Management Portals.” Commercial Manager, Lend Lease

The world leading tax, accountancy and advisory service provider has engaged W&S to maintain its Building Manuals at 15 Canada Square, Canary Wharf.  W&S are to provide technical authoring (weWRITE) and uploading Inteli-Scan for a long-term sustainable documentation solution.