Bridge engineer and HBPW managing partner, Paul Withers, rolled up his sleeves when he visited a local school to take part in one of his most important engineering projects to date!
Paul, who is used to wearing a suit and working with huge clients such as Associated British Ports and Network Rail, came to the aid of Tuxford Primary Academy in Newark, East Midlands.
Teachers there wanted to give students hands-on experience of how to grow flowers and food in a greenhouse but, when they saw the cost of aluminium greenhouses, they came up with the idea of making their own……out of old plastic drink bottles.
Paul, also a member of Rotary, intervened and managed to persuade his Retford Club to find some cash to fund the project.
“The Retford Club’s Foundation and Youth Committees, together with the Tuxford Legacy, a sum of money donated to Rotary by a former resident, enabled us to make cash available to purchase a greenhouse frame and then I turned up on the appointed day to coordinate the engineering!”
Youngsters collected hundreds of empty two litre bottles to form the ‘skin’ of the greenhouse which now stands on a sturdy concrete base, courtesy of the school’s resident engineer, a certain Mr Withers!
“I was delighted to get involved on behalf of HBPW,” said Paul “because projects of this nature not only teach children about preserving the environment and the concept of re-using valuable resources, but also encourage them to learn about food and its origin.
“Bottle greenhouses are relatively cheap, sturdy and easy to repair,” he added, “and they also link to the National Curriculum in that they support learning with things like label writing, counting and caring for the environment. It was a real community effort and a day of great enthusiasm with a tangible outcome that youngsters will remember forever.”
