Big Society

September has been a great month for CEI Services in terms of the work we have completed but also with changes in the business it has been great to see the team pull together in training and in terms of the work we have had to complete.

It looks like our involvement with flood damaged properties in Cockermouth has finally come to an end, almost 12 months after the floods hit. We think our end results look fantastic but like everyone else in Cumbria we hope to never have to do this type of work again! It has been a tough year for Cumbria and we hope this Winter is much happier and less eventful then the last!

As well as laying block paved driveways, pressure cleaning buildings and driveways, graffiti removal, monument cleaning, internal cleaning, some landscaping and other repairs, we have been working on our secret side quite regularly this month aswell! This is a side to our pressure cleaning business we are unable to discuss in any specific detail however we are working with some of the biggest names in the WORLD all over the UK and hope to continue doing so for many years to come! Send us an email and we might tell you more! Then again we might not!

Finally we have watched with interest for more details of David Camerons big society to materialise. We hope that it will put an end to centralised services so that councils are given the freedom (or are forced) to choose the best priced local contractor for a particular job. Small to medium businesses in this country would be boosted enormously by securing work from their local authorities. A lot needs to change before this happens however and to me there is still nothing firmly in places to really help us! You can visit http://www.thebigsociety.co.uk/ to keep upto date with developments and put your ideas forward. We have recently submitted a few of our own innovative ideas/suggestions and we wait with baited breath to see if we get a response!

Finally, you might remember Lee Parr has become our Operations Manager for the Midlands; and our move down the country has proved fruitful already securing some high profile industrial cleaning and painting in December. A big welcome to Lee, we hope he continues his positive start for many years to come!!

Power Washing New York Style and CEI News

Take a look at this fantastic photo of a pressure cleaning company in New York getting high and dirty in Manhattan, New York City. Having spent quite a lot of time in the USA the CEI team is envious of this cleaning companies potential future work, as a large percentage of the cities buildings are in the condition of the left side of this photo! If New York decides to really clean itself up then we may have to think about immigration!

CEI Services planned expansion has gone well and we now have an established base in the Midlands with our Midland Operations Manager Lee Parr very proud and excited about the potential ahead. A big congratulations to him on securing the role and on behalf of everyone at CEI Services, we wish him all the best for the future!

We are now ideally positioned to service current and new clients throughout the whole of the UK on a contractual or one off basis. We hope to be able to provide our customers with added value for money, quicker response times and of course we hope to reduce fuel costs which is good for us and the environment!

Would you believe we are still working on restoring flood damaged houses in Cockermouth? Thats right, approaching10 months on from the awful floods the town is still very much recovering although it appears as if it will bounce back stronger than ever! The Cumbrian way! We are helping to restore block paved driveways, patio's, decking which all had to be ripped up and relayed after the floods tore through.

We have also recently completed a lovely job in Liverpool on a terraced house. The job involved pressure cleaning the building, preparing some surfaces for painting, relaying some external floor tiles, capping the perimiter brick wall with decorative bricks and painting the perimiter walls and the window sills and columns. The property looks fantastic and there will soon be a short case study from the job available to view at http://www.ceiservices.co.uk/ but for now, here's what the owner had to say about our work:

"CEI made every attempt to meet our needs and were excellent not only in the standard of the final completion of the job they undertook, but also in the positive and responsive manner they conducted supportive communication from 3,500 miles for us here living overseas. A very professional outfit that give high quality value for your money. We would have no hesitation re-hiring them again for similar work."

Always nice to hear positive feedback and we are very glad he and his wife were happy with the end results!

Pacific Garbage Patch

The Pacific Garbage Patch is the worlds largest rubbish dump, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger every hour of every day. Some of the plastic which has formed a soup throughout the water column has taken many years to arrive here and is bought in by currents. Scientists extimate it to cover an area somewhere between the size of Texas and, wait for it, the USA. It is a mammoth issue which no government will ever address due it's depth and location. Do we just have to accept then that vast areas of our oceans (the Atlantic has a similar issue) are just going to become more and more polluted and contaminated?

It seems so....

Please take a few minutes to look at the video below which tells you all about this shocking man made plastic soup in the middle of our Pacific Ocean.




Raising awareness of this tragedy is all we can do at the moment, it is surprising how many people have no idea it exists!!!

Exciting New Developments

CEI Services are pleased to announce that we are expanding! Thats right, at the beginning of August we will be opening our sub depot in the Midlands, Tamworth to be precise!

Keep coming back for much more news on this exciting development and other CEI related goings on over the next couple of weeks!

CEI Secures High Profile Work For The Summer

Well with our campaign to see the railway bridge back to its former glory well and truly successful (apart from the fact the council are doing it and not us!) we feel optimistic about the year ahead and with this great weather we feel a busy Summer coming on! We hope our successful Summer coincides with Englands fortunes improving in South Africa! Back the beard and lets bring it home, the World Cup that is, not the beards!!

CEI will be working at one of Northern Englands largest Jaguar Car Garages over the coming weeks, this is the latest work within one of the largest car groups in Cumbria and we can only put our continued relationship down to our cost effective, high quality end results along with our ability to work flexibly to minimise disruption to their clients! We also have some work with various McDonalds restaurants coming up, school summer improvements programmes to assist with and a whole bunch of jobs we love doing and are very proud of but are just unable to discuss with anyone, sorry!!!

Railway Bridge Update

Although the council did not reply directly to our generous email and offer to clean up and manage the vandalism on the bridge as detailed in the last post, the local newspapers and residents were interested and there was an article in last weeks times and star - part of this article can be read by following the link below!

http://www.timesandstar.co.uk/appeal-to-clean-up-cockermouth-eyesore-footpath-1.716453?referrerPath=home/2.1681

The council comment says they are going to get the bridge back into shape which is fantastic news for everyone in Cockermouth although CEI's offer could possibly have seen the work getting done at no expense to the council or the taxpayer! I have sent a follow up email to the council to ask why they didnt see any point in replying to us so I guess we will wait and see what comes back. If anything!

The main point of the fuss was to get the bridge clean and if that happens then it has all been worth it!

Cockermouth Railway Bridge

CEI Services staff and hundreds, if not thousands of Cockermouth residents use the railway bridge to access the town, the park and many other locations. It is a busy, high footfall area that looked completely different 5 years ago to how it looks now!

It used to be a place people could stop to admire the beautiful views up and down the river, have a picnic or pick berries. It is now fairly disgusting with shocking levels of graffiti and vandalism causing some people to stop using it altogether for fear of who they may encounter as they walk over it. As well as the graffiti it is overgrown with moss and weeds and generally covered in dirt and mud. All the metalwork needs also needs repainting!!

Having approached our local council with a plan of action for this area we await their response! I fear we may wait for some time though so thankfully the local press arranged to meet some residents who are particularly bothered by the areas current condition, so they could run a story in this weeks papers. Check out the article, it should be out in this Fridays local press!

CEI have proposed to work with the council to ensure the area is restored cost effectively and managed properly in the future, we want this area to be restored we are not interested in making lots of money from doing so. We have offered to use our graffiti and vandalism management experience free of charge for 6 months to prove to the council that the area doesnt have to be neglected for years then cleaned, then neglected etc etc. We are extremely confident we can make it a place to be proud of once again! We have even suggested to the council innovative ways in which we can fund the works! I hope they listen and at least speak to us about it. Most of all we hope the area gets cleaned up and we don't mind who ends up doing it really!

As you can see from our photos the area is in a real mess! Contact the council and share your view, it could help to get the issue sorted sooner!