Workshop 1: Transcript

TRANSCRIPT: GAGOG Workshop 1: Building Repair & Traditional Skills Grants

SPEAKERS

Silvia Scopa, Colin Baillie, Gemma Park, Erin Walter, Niall Murphy

 

Silvia Scopa
Welcome, everyone to Get a Grip on Grants discussion and the step by step guide to Glasgow City Heritage Trust grant process. So as I’m sure you are aware, this is a series of events. We have been running this event since September. Our first surgery was about heritage and community. This is our second surgery. And as you know, we are going to be focusing on  our building repair grant and the traditional skills grant. Our next one is on the 11th of February. And it’s going to be highlighting community and heritage again, and then we are going to have our last one in March and it’s going to be about building repair and development grant. So keep an eye on our website, all the details are there. And yeah, you can book they are all going to be on zoom, for obvious reasons. And there are going to be free. So if you know anyone who’s interested in them, help  us to spread the word. And of course,  we created this series of events to talk about our grants, just to let you know how you can get a grant from Glasgow City Heritage Trust. So I think we’re ready to start. So I forgot to introduce myself. And I am Silvia Scopa. I am the Community Engagement Officer at Glasgow City Heritage Trust. I am doing this event with Erin Walter, our Monitoring and Evaluation Officer. And we also are here with one  speaker and  the Traditional Skills Officer. Taylor Cross-Whiter who is the Development Grant Officer is also giving us a hand and we have Niall Murphy as well with the Building Repair Manager. So it’s a full house. So before we start, I’m going to remind you to please keep your camera and microphone off during the talk. And if you have any questions and please, ask questions, you can just write them in the chat at the bottom of your screen, then one of us is going to collect all the questions and me or Erin are going to ask the question to the speakers or to Niall, because he’s available for questions as well. So basically, who we are and what we do. Let’s start from the basics. So Glasgow City Heritage Trust is an independent charity that provides nearly 1 million pounds in funding to projects promoting and protecting Glasgow’s heritage and in particular, its historic and built environment. We do internal events and projects, like exhibitions. Well, now online exhibitions, but talks and CPD and as well we do fund external projects. So as I said, I’m the community engagement officer and Erin is helping me as well tonight. So the structure of tonight’s event is pretty easy. So we are going to talk about the building repair grants and the traditional skills grant. We are going to walk you through the grant process journey, some do’s and don’ts. And then we have two case studies. So Gemma Park who is the traditional skills officer, she’s going to talk about external grants and internal grants as well. And Colin Baillie is going to talk about the Building Repair Grant,  he was a grantee,  now his project is completed, and then we’ll have some time for questions and answers. So please ask away. At the end of the presentation, you’ll see a slide with all our contacts and our emails. But all this information is available on our website. Okay, so now Erin is going to come in.

 

Erin Walter
Perfect. Thank you, Silvia. So I will be taking over the next few slides. And we are quickly going to walk you through the application journey, this is a very useful infographic just to kind of lay out exactly the different steps. So you’ll be starting with an enquiry which is followed up by a meeting and formal application, a submission to a committee, a decision, a contract, your actual grant project, the evaluation of the project as such. And finally, the funding that you are claiming at the end of next slide. The enquiry process is rather simple. Once you have a general concept, and you know,  who will be leading the grant, who will be involved in and what some of the outputs will be, you can go to our website, Glasgow heritage.org.uk, there is a grants tab and you just scroll down to grant enquiry form. And you’ll be taken to a type form, it takes about five to 10 minutes to fill out a few kind of preliminary questions. And from here, this will be sent into our office manager, who will then refer on to a different grant program. Next slide. There are five grant programs. So tonight, we’re focusing on building repair and traditional skills, but we also have a development grant community engagement and  heritage. Often, there is an overlap between projects, sometimes with funding, sometimes just with works, but we’re very happy to see kind of interdisciplinary action happen. So after  your inquiries have been submitted, and you’ve been contacted by one of our grant officers, you will be given an application form. Often you’ll have a meeting with a grant officer just to discuss what exactly the form requires. This is kind of specific to budget and evaluation, which can be a bit more tricky, as we of course, have to report to our own funders. So we are quite specific on what the committee is looking for. Um, but these are things that we can easily walk you through. In general staff are very happy to meet to talk about concepts or outcomes, small questions. And once you complete your application, occasionally it takes a few drafts, you submit it in, and next slide. And you will then be you’ll have the take into committee there’s three different committees, they meet quarterly, separate weeks. However, once you’ve submitted the grant, it usually takes about a month to receive a decision. Along with your decision, you will receive a grant offer letter and a contract, you sign in return these and by that time you can begin your works. If for whatever reason your application is declined by the committee, you are more than welcome to get feedback from your officer and to resubmit at a later date. The next committee will provide you with what was missing or what could be better. However, generally, if you’re going to committee, your officer can give you that information beforehand. And next slide. So once you have done all of your paperwork and you’re ready to begin your works, you have generally nine months. There is opportunity for extensions later if needed, but our general contract is nine months. If you’re in need of interim payments. This can be worked out with your Grants Officer but definitely needs to be discussed beforehand. Once your works are complete, it’s very important to remember receipt of invoices for your claiming and also that costings are not flexible. If for whatever reason your budget appears to be shifting from what was approved and signed off in your contract. It’s important to contact your grant officer as they can approve budgetary changes, but it needs to be done prior to that spending having occurred. So at the end of this project, you’ll have these collected invoices, you’ll submit them as well as your evaluation. The evaluation is reflected in your original application. This is both for outputs, outcomes and the indicators which will evidence your outcomes having have their succeeded or failed and at times not every outcome succeeds, that’s okay. What we’re really looking for is the evidence that this was attempted and how we can learn from it. So 10% of your grant funding is dependent on the evaluation being submitted and approved, like the application. In this case, I would be meeting with you for it. And we can certainly work through that evaluation report. There are guidance notes for it and it’s not overly taxing, so not too much for there. It’s a great idea even before your project to have a look at our guidance notes. Again, they’re available on our website as they have most of the answers that you may ask or may not even know you need yet. Next slide, please. So when talking about developing and concept, this is a bit different for building repair, as hopefully you would already have the building, either as a residential or commercial asset.  And our guidance notes here are particularly useful when talking about the eligibility of repairs. Silvia talked about the comprehensive external  repairs. But this is also relevant as our funding is in three year cycles. So at times, what we can find does change. So it’s useful to look on here and see exactly what works are grant eligible. You can of course, discuss this with the grant officer and Niall Murphy who’s here tonight, is the building repair manager as well as the vice director. And they’re more than happy to help you with costings, as well as your concepts for traditional skills. Currently, workshops, craft making upskilling. These are all great ways. And the concepts here can really expand to many creative ventures. So definitely suggest going and having a look at our case studies online seeing what some of the past grantees have done, and going from there. But definitely keeping in mind that we are a charity based on historic built heritage. While that can be intangible heritage, it does need to be relevant to the built environment. to highlight three different grants to external and an internal grant as well. So I’m just going to let Gemma speak.

 

Gemma Park
For their shopfront and for the window, the grantees were going to employ a craftsman Ross Hastie who actually did our window at GCHT. You can see him there, too. The ghost signs shopfront, which is still there now, if you want to go have a look at it.  Sign Writing is a really rare skill, it’s not something that many people can do. Simone and Lindsay having learned more about it, were keen to kind of teach people about it. And they were quite excited by it. And this grant, I think, it is quite a good example of kind of one of the requirements for getting this kind of grant funding. And so we were able to grant fund them for the work on the caveat that they would be an educational site to it. So what’s going to happen because of COVID, we would have liked to have had it as a live build, which would mean people could come and watch Ross and set to making the same but obviously, we can’t do that. So what Lindsay and Simone are going to do is create a film where they document the process of the of the sign being created, also supplemented by an interview with Ross himself about how he got into this career, maybe some tips, his journey to it, what maybe some young people could do to get into a career like this. And the film will be disseminated throughout different high schools in Glasgow, and in partnership with developing your workforce in order for young people to kind of get a glimpse into what what it takes to do this career. And also, just to highlight it for people that didn’t know that it was an option. And that’s Lindsay, and Simone they’re looking lovely on holiday. And I asked them about their experience of applying for the grant with us. And they very kindly said that it was a good experience, and that the grant funding is actually going to help them on the next chapter of their small business, which is something that’s a real priority for especially traditional skills, as we do a lot of funding for, you know, training and to help people present their progress their careers, and this is just, maybe there was something a bit different. And yeah, we’re excited about this one. So watch this space, and watch out for the bridal store opening as well. And the next one, please Silvia, as this one is the Dinghy  Building at the Tall Ship. This is another one that’s in progress. So we had an application from the Tall Ship and the Clyde Maritime Trust. For this one, they were looking for money to build a replica of wooden dinghy based on the blueprints of a 20th century dinghy that we have, obviously, they’ve got all the blueprints, and store at the Tall Ship. And we wanted to recreate one of these dinghies from the original blueprints. And they wanted to use it as an opportunity to get a team of volunteers and to actually learn how to do it and build the finished product. And all the volunteers come from really different backgrounds, different age groups, different levels of experience. And the idea was that they would all be learning the same skills. And what was interesting was that we want them to show them that the skills were transferable. So Niall Murphy and I took the team on a visit to the Norfolk / Bridge Street tenements site, then we are there with our waistcoats. And this is actually another grant funded project, building repair grant. And we took them there because it has a really interesting doomed ceiling, which at the interior of that is created with like kind of  boarded wooden structure. And it’s similar to the way that you would construct that the bow of the wooden dinghy. And we wanted to show the team that the stuff they were learning was transferable into larger scale projects. And the dinghy once finished, it’s due to be finished kind of early 21, it’s going to go on display at the Tall Ship. And there’s going to be a whole exhibition about 20th century shipbuilding to kind of give a bigger platform to the history of Clyde built boats, which is going to be really cool. So look out for that. And I spoke to this grantee as well about their experience. And I think the good thing about this was that it’s got a bit of a legacy to it, it’s obviously got the the tangible output of the boat that’s going to be on display. And it was a great way for the team involved to learn some transferable skills. So that’s one was a good example of kind of hands on training, which is also something that is a priority for us as well. And finally, something that we do with traditional skills is internal projects. And these are all in the education mostly. And one of these is our traditional skills, continuous professional development lectures. We try to do one of these a month. And what I do is I organize an expert speaker from different traditional skills to coming up a lecture on their, on their knowledge and to give some case studies and examples. And the demographic for these as largely conservation and construction professionals who need to learn these things to kind of upskill themselves and expand their own knowledge. However, they are open to the general public. People with a keen interest in conservation and traditional buildings are obviously welcome to come hear from experts. We try to keep these as regular as once a month like I say but beacause of COVID. It’s been quite tricky. We’ve switched to delivering these via zoom, which I think has worked quite well. And if life was normal, we like to try and do these in person as well. We’ve got, that’s our last traditional skills officer there, she went to the Lyme Center and did a practical CPD. So we’d like to partner with these different organizations and, you know, visit like sites and do actual hands on training as well. And at the end of the CPD, other people that attend them get an HSBC certified certificate, which you can give to them, you can use for the employer. And yeah, the most recent ones we’ve been doing have been under the umbrella of sustainable renovation and climate change, which is obviously something that’s one of the most pressing issues and conservation and heritage conservation. So that was the theme of our most recent CPDS. And they’ve all been recorded, because they’ve been on zoom, and they’ll be available to purchase in our shop if anyone’s interested. And yeah, if anyone’s interested in attending these they are  always advertised on our website. But yeah, this is probably one of our most important internal projects, because it’s kind of tangible education for the people that actually look after the historical environment. So yeah, that’s me. Thank you, Silvia.

 

Silvia Scopa
So if you have any question for Gemma, just write them in the chat. So okay, we can move on to the building repair grant So we are going to talk to an ex grantee of the building repair grant. Colin Baillie I just realized that  I spelled his name wrong, it should be a double L. So yeah, he got a building repair grant to repair the gable of a tenement building in Wilton drive that he co owned with other 11 owners. So I think that Colin is connecting now and is going to talk you through the next slide. Hi, Silvia. Hi.

 

Colin Baillie
Hi, everyone. So and yeah, my name is Colin Baillie. And my wife and I , we’re one of 12 owners in total of our tenement building, at  19 Wilton Drive. In 2019 we were recipient, originally recipients of our building repair grant. And I know Megan and I are both architects, we own   a small architectural practice in Glasgow, and we’re kind of generally focused on residential work, small scale residential work and some experience of working with historic buildings, but not an extensive amount of experience. And so that was very much kind of an opportunity for us to engage with that as well. I think an important point  to note is that, as I mentioned, we were co owners, so that so we were sort of acting as  spokespersons if you like for for the the other owners of the building the grantee, as was the was the collective of co owners effectively. And so I think it’s important kind of sort of important point to make is how sort of necessary as through this process to have to have someone kind of weaving it into your heading and, and dealing directly with with the application process. And so the building itself is actually it’s a very typical tenement building. I think that’s kind of important to note as well, it’s not a remarkable building as such, but as part of the conservation area, and kind of forms part of the historic fabric of the street and conservation classical West conservation area. And one side of the remarkable thing about it is the single story element which is below the scaffolding and the image there, which presented kind of a number of challenges for for our project as well as some kind of quite specific repair issues and so on. So, the project itself, and that the tenement, like like a lot of tenements  required quite a significant amount of repair work. And I just wanted to say before I kind of went to the full scope it out I just wanted to touch on from the perspective of our project, the, the the actual grant process or the application journey as Erin kind of said earlier. The process for us actually almost exactly map that map that process that Erin set out. In terms of, so we identified a number of quite significant and essential repair issues with with our building. And we knew that the extent of the work that was required to be done would be quite challenging for the coowners  to be able to get together and fund it ourselves. We also knew that there was a danger that if we went down that route through through the factor the building factor, we may end up with sort of doing the minimum amount of work required to satisfy the the sort of financial requirements and the other of the other owners and we so we started to engage with Glasgow city Heritage Trust, and as a means of kind of potentially putting together a more holistic scope of repair work. And I know we’re conservation focused scope of repair work, and using the sort of part  funded grant as really something to sort of bring the owners together around the other owners, and getting kind of get them engaged and looking after the building better. And so yeah, we initially discussed eligibility with with maximum clarity, with Glasgow City Heritage Trust. And after some pretty, pretty clear guidance from the from the early meetings with with Glasgow City Heritage Trust, we’ve put together an application, and ultimately were successful. I also just wanted to say, as architects we were aware of as Glasgow City Heritage Trust in what we do before we embark on the grant process, but we weren’t actually we don’t have any specific prior knowledge of the process and the Trust, was really, really good at guiding us guiding us right from the outsets. So, it was a I mean process process process for us as well, despite  having some prior knowledge and some professional knowledge. So, yeah, the project is the project itself. Yeah, like like, like a lot of tenements, the building had undergone some really, really unappropriate conservation or unappropriate remedial work which did not follow conservation practice, effectively. And of particular concern was the gable wall that sits above the single story element, and which had been historically rendered with a really tick layer of cement based render which does not let that substrate below  it breathes as a brick built Gable wall. And over the sort of past 20 or 30 years since this unappropriate repair had been done. This the the wall was really the concrete  cement render was starting to crack  and it was a few areas that it actually fallen down onto the roof roof below that entails and kind of causing water  and other associated issues. So it was really it was it was quite an essential and scope of repair at the heart of that but it was also the cement render was also causing fundamental damage to the brick substrate below, which is something that we really wanted to address. So the project scope ended up involving strapping off the unappropriate render material, consolidating the original rec work below, re rendering the gable with a conservation appropriate lighting based render products. We also added to that the replacement of LED work abutment details that replacement of lead work and chimney flashings and overhaul of the of the chimneys to the gable. And that was done that was organized through main contact with with a stone masonry contractor effectively who led the project on sights.

 

Silvia Scopa
You want me to go to the next bit?

 

Colin Baillie
Yes, please. So do you want… Could you go on one stage further? So we can see that I went to the challenges. And so when we got it when we got the contract started there, I mean, I guess it was a number of challenges through through this process, as I mentioned, and Glasgow City Heritage Trust, were very, kind of very, very clear with our with our guidance and kind of discussing the potential outcomes for our projects and our  eligibility for the project. I think one of the hardest thing for us as, as one of 12 owners was was corralling the other residents to we had coowners from our, ranging from our 90 year old next door neighbor and who had some difficulty sort of understanding what we were what we were proposing and why. To sort of young first time buyers and young couples with different basic range of different financial situations.  And it was really quite a challenge to bring all those people together, and have them to understand what the building required and how we were proposing to go about it. And part of the way that we did that, which also came from discussions with Glasgow City Heritage Trust was to put together maintenance and management plan for the building and discuss that with the co owners that involved a visual survey taking photographs of all the areas of the building, and kind of various stage repairs and just picking and recording what what might need to be done in the future and sharing that with the co owners. And we also had to deal with some unforeseen health and condition issues. I mentioned that cement and inappropriate cement render on the building for about 20 or 30 years. Unfortunately, we removed that and the brick below was was in a pretty  severe condition, with a lot of the mortar having completely eroded. So that was literally was bad work, that had to be reappointed, and in some cases completely relaid. And we got around those issues. And we worked quite closely with a contractor to kind of keep the scope of repairs in line with the contract as far as, as far as possible. And we were we were pretty good at kind of helping us with that. We had a very extensive scaffolding structure, because of the nature of our building with a, with a single story  element, we had to basically bridge from front to back with the scaffolding and the front and back gardens, which was a pretty kind of monumental structure, that ourselves and the other residents had to had to kind of live under for quite quite a long time. And then finally, we I mentioned we were setting up the grant in 2019. We, towards the end of 19,  we were successful with a grant application, we were looking to start the work, early 2020, when the weather had just started to improve, we’re working with them with line products. Unfortunately, about a week before we were about to start the work, we went into the first lockdown, which caused a quite significant significant delay to the project overall. And we’ve kind of worked through that with Glasgow City Heritage Trust who were obviously understanding of the of the particular circumstances. However, ultimately, the works have now, have now just just reached completion there, we’re actually just planning out the final kind of clean down of the building last week. And and yet a successful outcome. Obviously, a really, a fairly serious repair actually was rectified. And that has been carried out in line with good conservation practice. And we were able to make sure they’re sort of the associated works were were carried out comprehensively as part of the as part of one project. And I think funding sort of fundamentally hadn’t produced a maintenance management plan for the building and got all the co owners around the table, got them to buy, enter this test project and kind of reach reach consensus, it’s really started conversations about how to plan for maintenance in the future and really sort of engage the owners with with what’s involved and co ownership of a 125 year old building in Glasgow. So it’s been both a challenging and rewarding and successful processing. Thank you.

Silvia Scopa
Thank you Colin that was great. So yeah,I think it’s just time for Q&A. So you can ask away. If you have any questions for Colin or Gemma or me or Erin or Niall, just ask away. This is the slide I was talking to you about with all our email addresses. Of course, there is also the address of our office, but we’re still all working from home at the moment. So yeah, I’m afraid you can’t  just come and say hi to the office. But yes here there are   all our email addresses that are all on our website as well. And I’m just noticing that on this picture, you can see the sign writing Gemma was talking about so on the front window. You can see unfortunately from the inside, all  of the gold leaf. It’s only visible from the outside, but you can see what she was talking about. So I think I’m going to stop sharing my screen. I think we do have only one question at the moment. But hopefully we’ll get some more in, so the question I have, let me see is from Phil And this for Colin is a very technical question. So the question is “How much how much acid erosion Did you find in the outer skin of the fluids for the flues, any reskinning before the rander work?”

 

Colin Baillie
And so I presume that is with reference to chimney flues. And none of them actually most of the chimneys were are were blocked up. And other than other than our own, which had fairly, fairly recently been lined with a with a with a metal, porcelain chimney liner. So it was  new. And was was intact, the flues themselves, built of bricks were actually extremely badly eroded in places. And partly, that is due to the fact that they are built only one brick deep. So we’ve got ticker, deep walls, the render ticker brick walls, double thick brick walls, and the mortar had eroded, but the wall was still kind of had enough compression and weight to sort of hold it together in the upper areas of the world, where the render the unappropriate render had eroded the mortar, but there was very little compression, and towards the top of the wall, and the brick was only a single width deep, basically, it came off with, it came off with the cement render, we were actually looking basically straight into chimney flues. So the way we dealt with that was that the brick had to be reused and we used as much original back as we could, which had the cement checked off it. And that we’ve actually had to rebuild several of the, the upper sections of the of the chimney stacks in order to provide a solid, solid substrate, but as I said, most of them were actually were actually just fully, fully blocked up internally and not in use.

 

Silvia Scopa
Thanks. So I’ve got another question. I think that probably, this is more for Niall Murphy, maybe. Okay, “Other grants stipulate that building factor needs to be in place and a common building insurance policy should be held by co-owners. Is this the same for the GCHT grants for building repairs, and does self factoring impact on application?”

Niall Murphy
Yeah , we not not so much with us in terms of the building factor, we can be flexible as provided that we have strong evidence that there’s a Residents Association who are competent, and we’re managing the building properly. And to have common bank account for the repairs, we could handle that with most of our tenement grant contracts. So it tends to be that we end up involving the council in some way with it. And the pre 1919 team in the council, it’s definitely their preference to have a building factor involved in it, because they want to see that at the end of the day, once the building is properly restored, that the building is being properly maintained and looked after. And in the longer term, they have more confidence with their bill being a building factor in place. With regards to the common insurance policy, I would most definitely encourage everybody to do it.  It’s not, it’s not one of our criteria at the moment. It may be in future. It definitely is with the Glasgow City Council, tenement grant. And the reason for that you just have to look at things like say the recent fires at Albert Cross with the one building that was largely destroyed, which was to the south side of the cross that did have a common insurance policy in place. So they’ve been lots of discussions about how to move that forward. But even then, it’s still taken the best part of a year for the owners to begin to come together and get that sorted that was with common buildings for policy in place on the other side of the cross that’s made life much more difficult, difficult for them because they didn’t have a common policy in place. So it does make life easier for you, it is a prudent thing to do. So I would recommend that.

Silvia Scopa                                                                                                                      Thanks, Niall. So we got a question from Mariangela who was asking what our current  time for responding to enquiries. So it depends, because for example, there are grants that receive less enquiries. But if these are building repair grants, I think we receive almost two enquiries a day or something like that. So of course, we are working on them daily. So possibly some time there is a little bit about a waiting time but I think that if you sent an enquiry in October, you’re going to hear back pretty soon, I think. So the next question is, “Are they building repair grants restricted to specific areas or districts?

 

Niall Murphy
I think As long as the building is in Glasgow, it has to have, the building has to perform statutory protection. So that’s kind of the core of everything grant funded. So it has to be in a conservation area, it can be an unlisted building in a conservation area, or it has to be a, b or c listed.

Silvia Scopa
Okay. The next one is from Robert to Colin. “Is your building  is self factored, and if not, how did the factor fit into the grant process? Including approving including approved contractors?”

Colin Baillie
Sure. Yeah. Well, that and that kind of ties into the previous question that Niall took actually as well. And, yeah, are building is factored and we have an appointed factor. And they were actually, there lots of not particularly nice things said about factors in Glasgow, and our factor was actually very helpful in the process. And how they fit again, well, they weren’t particularly involved through the through the grant process. But at the, when it came to awarding the contract and setting up, they actually said that they acted effectively as, as the client under the contract on behalf of co owners. So they said they set up a joint bank account for the co owners and manage that to payment. And from from all the call and our sides. And, and then also dealt with paying the contractor on our behalf. So and then also,  also the  manager calling and check insurance policy for the building as well. And in terms of appointing, of appointing to factors, they effectively they entered into contract with with the main contractor on behalf of on behalf of the co owners. I’m not sure maybe Niall can comment on how common that is. But they weren’t particularly keen to do that at first. And with some kind of cajoling from Megan and I they have agreed to take on that role. And I think it was a huge benefit that they did it.

Silvia Scopa
Niall, you’re on mute. Yeah. Colin, I missed I missed the part that you said about the factors there at the end.

Colin Baillie
So our in our project the factor effectively was in contract they were they entered in contracts with  with a contractor. And on behalf of the coproprietors.

Niall Murphy
Yeah, that would that would be the normal situation in that. Yes.

Colin Baillie
And we found that was they were that was a very, it was very helpful to have that sort of third party to the coowners to deal with.

Niall Murphy
It does it does make life easier, and it’s obviously means that the factor is taking the stress rather than one of the owners in the building.

Colin Baillie
Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, we’re very lucky to get that.

Silvia Scopa
Okay. Another question for Colin again. “Was a building survey completed before application to Glasgow City Heritage Trust? Or was the grant awarded on the basis of photograph? quotes? Very good questions.

Colin Baillie
Okay. Yeah. So I mean, this this is a good, it’s a good question. So in our, in our case, we applied on the basis of having about a building survey we did. We personally organized a survey in order to produce a maintenance and management plan, which we did, through the through the grant process and sort of in consultation with Glasgow City Heritage Trust, that was sort of that fed into the application process in terms of kind of showing some of the beneficial outcomes of the of the co-owners going through that that process and taking cognizance of the kind of wider issues involved with the building. So that that’s kind of one part of, of the survey, if you like, I think we what the question relates specifically to is how that how would you define the scope of work and the costs that are involved in that, and before that, gets gets put in front of the grant committee sort of thing. So and so in our case, Megan, and I put together this this scope of work and a specification and we did that with some consultation from conservation architects who assessed and defined the scope of work, and we got that cost we had that cost cost, it’s on a competitive basis before we went forward with the grant application. So we already had effectively, three prices are carrying out the work and a preferred contractor at the point where we were able to put that that subtotal into the entire application.

Silvia Scopa
And, Niall, do you have anything to add to it ? It was quite explanatory, okay.

Niall Murphy
Yes, I would, I would strongly, strongly advise that because as a group of owners, particularly in a tenement,  townhouse, or something like that, you want to have certainty. So you want to have some idea of you know, how much this is going to cost, you don’t want to suddenly start your works, and then discover that there’s a whole, you know, part of the building that you know, you hadn’t fully understood what was going on. And that actually was in need of repair. And you actually haven’t costed for it properly, you want as much cost certainty as possible. And that’s why we try and encourage people to do this as much as possible, and it will make your life easier. So we always get an it’s a requirement of our grant funders, because we’re supported by Historic Environment Scotland and Glasgow City Council, they require us to have a conservation accredited professional advisor involved in every project. And so we encourage people to get one of those on board, it can be either a surveyor or an architect. And, and what we would do is, we would get them to put together this thing that we’re calling basically, like a building, conservation or management plan, which would identify the areas that the building need, you know, need to be repaired, can look at the whole building holistically, and can then use a traffic light system to tell people you know, these areas need repaired like, you know, now, or these areas need repair will need repaired in possibly five years time. So you can you can prioritize your works accordingly. And then work out your budgets accordingly. And then we get them to use that to pull together a set of tender information. So drawings and a specification that will allow the contractors and we have to have a minimum of three contractors involved. So there’s a clear competitive tendering situation, because these are public monies. And so that’s requirement for public monies. And all contractors are pricing, on a level playing field, they all have access to the same information. And therefore, you know, they know that they have to comply with that. And then in theory, you will get a series of comparable tenders out of that, that you can then readily compare and decide which one’s most competitive, which one’s the right one for you.

Colin Baillie
I love the fact that as well, from our experience, I think that is where they kind of buy in from the co owners and also kind of early engagement with the Trust is really important because as Niall said, sort of summarize, there is a bit of speculative work involved in putting that putting, putting that together, getting out getting a specification and getting that tendered  that that’s what you’re effectively required to do before you have certainty that you think you’re going to achieve that funding. And I think that’s really important to kind of be speaking to the Trust through the initial enquiry process and taking on board the feedback you’re getting from that to kind of smooth that process as much as possible and make sure that you’ve got all the other owners on board with with kind of, with commissioning some speculative work, basically. And you know, I think the way to look at that as well as whether it’s funded, if it’s grant funded or not, it’s kind of as likely to be very important, essential kind of maintenance work through the building requires one way or another. And I think that’s the best, my perspective, the way the way we approached it. And so it was important to understand the needs of the building, and what it was going to take to repair them. And then we were able to take that information for written, secure round.

 

Silvia Scopa
Great. So I’ve got another question. And I guess it’s for Colin, “Did the option to externally insulate get considered, esp since the end flat has so much external surface area. small flat spaces tend to not cope well with internal insulation area-wise.”

Colin Baillie
So no, it wasn’t, it wasn’t really considered. And it was  was something that we were considering to do. I’m not sure that we would have been speaking to Glasgow City Heritage Trust because there are a number of conservation considerations when when thinking about and selecting a historic, historic building about compatibility with the existing fabric and compatibility, readability of the of the building fabric and the products you can use, so there can be quite a lot of detrimental effects of insulating a building externally. And which Yeah, I’m not sure if those you have a specific policy in that new,  Yeah, it’s genuinely not considered compatible with good conservation practice in many circumstances.

Niall Murphy
I can chip in on that one. We don’t at the moment. But you know, things are always developing. I mean, we run on three year strategic plan. So we’re just coming to the end of a strategic plan. And we’ll obviously have to over the course of next year, we’ll be rethinking what our strategic plan will be in future. But obviously, we have to take our cue from Glasgow City Council and from Historic Environment Scotland, and Historic Environment Scotland is becoming much, much more conscious about those issues, and is looking at those issues. So wearing a completely different hat. I’m heavily involved in Govan Hill Baths, and we are externally insukating part of the building. But it’s we did a whole heritage impact assessment on the building to figure out, you know, which parts you could possibly do that, and it was the lesser of two evils because obviously, the baths, the key thing about the baths is the tiling on the inside and around the the interior of the baths, which you didn’t want to disturb. So it was actually better if the insulation went on the exterior of the building, and it was a brick wall at that point. So HES is actually interested in helping funding that which is quite unusual nowadays. So it’s quite experimental for them. But that may be something that we look at in the future, but just now that we can’t, yeah.

Silvia Scopa                                                                                                                          Okay. So I’ve got a question for Gemma. Okay, so, um, “Hi, Gemma, could you talk a little more about the educational outcomes for the traditional skills grant, particularly in light of COVID restrictions, we have an idea for the production and exhibition of architecture of terracotta related to a specific building in Glasgow, is an exhibition /artists talk sufficient? Or would you require that to be training/ workshops too?”

Gemma Park
Okay,  talking about an artist talk or an exhibition. And that sounds more under the umbrella of a heritage grant, because they fund exhibitions and stuff. However, we do do like crossover grants. And so it could be something that was collaborative, that was an exhibition, if you wanted to run workshops that were aimed, you know, architectural terracotta, then that’s probably something that people can do with traditional skills, for the outcome side of it, an outcomes need to be tangible. So you need to be able to count, for example, how many people came to came to a workshop, how many people were trained up in this skill, and you need an evaluation about what they’ve learned. And if they were going to use the skill, and further, that kind of thing. And you need to think about your demographics, or if it’s the public, or if it’s more professional, or if it was going to be just kind of like a fun public workshop, or if it was going to be actually for people who are already craftsmen who are upskilling. And it is something kind of new to expand their knowledge. So these are the different demographics you think about and then the outcomes kind of veered off from that once you’ve decided, but and if you do have an idea specifically for a project, please send me an email. And I’d love to talk about it. And we can, you know, have a chat and see if there’s something we can work out. And and like I say, if it’s an exhibition you’re thinking of doing then definitely that would be a heritage or heritage ground. And but like also, like I say that we can also we can just cross over and we can call up on it. So yeah, do send me an email, and I’d love to hear more about it. If that helps.

Silvia Scopa
Thanks Gemma. So the next one is “How long does payment take once all the invoices and the evaluation have been provided? Do we need to advance payment in full and get a refund? Or can the grant directly, the grantee that actually pay the contractor”, so usually it takes 14 working days. But for building repair ground?  20 working days go and visit site and inspect. I speak from a community engagement point of view like my grants can go up to 5000. So I think that Niall probably is Yeah, he can reply to this question. But yeah, sure.

Niall Murphy                                                                                                                Thanks, Silvia. I have 20 working days in which you go and inspect the works. And then on the back of that because you basically you would get how it worked. Usually it depends on the size of project, if you’ve got a quality surveyor involved or an architect and forth, they will produce an evaluation, then I will be able to go through that evaluation and extract from that what I think the grant eligible works are at that particular point in the project, I will go and have a look at site and, you know, just check that all the work that is being done is in compliance with Historic Environment, Scotland’s conservation standards. And that, you know, I see that the work that has been valued is actually reflected in what you can see in the inspection on site. And then at that point, I will process that payment. And nowadays, it used to be that you had to, which is a real   improvements on the back of, of COVID. And a pandemic and the lockdown is that we used to have to get two signatures for checks from two of the trustees. And so you’d have to wait for one of the trustees to be available to come into the office. And so that was always a drag on the process. But now we can do it via your bank’s transfer instead. So that speed things up quite a bit. But it does mean that you have to be careful with your contractor to let them know when exactly you can expect payment from us.

Silvia Scopa                                                                                                                          Cool. Thank you. So  “Another one directly for Colin – if happy to answer – Who was the contractor that completed the work? Our prospective building repair is very similar to yours, albeit potentially more complex and maybe worse condition! We are struggling to get stone mason companies to even quote at this point.  Do you have any word of advice for Louise?

Colin Baillie
Yeah, sure. Um, I think I think first of all is for for work like, like our project. And it sounds like your project as well, Louise. So it’s really important to get the right contractor and to make sure that you’re working with someone who understands conservation practice and the requirements of of doing grant funded, grant funded work. And so when we, when we started the tendering process we had so obviously, we ended up with three, we had tender returns from three different contractors. And I think two of those were recommended to us, names given to us by the conservation architects that we were engaging with. And the other was a company that we were very aware of from from our work, and I can give you the names of those which were an EDS construction was one of the one of those who tendered conservation masonry. But one of those who tendered and the contractor who carried out our project was a company called Real Nbt, traditional stonemasons. I guess it was without any personal recommendation, but that those are the names that tended on our jobs. And we wouldn’t be who we worked with and have done lots of similar similar work, as I understand. And the we had, we had issues with our contract, but I guess all within the realms of what you may expect from from a building contract, but I would suggest getting in touch with him to be happy to provide a tender return for you, Great, thank you Colin. So I think this was the last question unless

Niall Murphy
There’s one other one, Silvia, which was somebody is asking “How do you get involved in the selection of contractors? Or is this free choice?

Silvia Scopa 
Thank you, Niall. Sorry.

Niall Murphy
I can have a go at that one. Oh, yeah. Okay, the answer that is not per se, we would be anticipating that your conservation accredited professional, would be pulling together a list of competent contractors to do the sort of conservation repairs that we can fund. So isn’t just anyone that can do this kind of work, they have to be you have to have some kind of knowledge of their background. We do have lists in the office and, recommendations of people who can carry out particularly, you know, contractors, we know that work in the Glasgow city region who can carry out these these sorts of repairs, we do have those kinds of things in the office. So which can be quite useful for people, but very much something that has to be driven by a discussion between the co owners and the conservation accredited professional. So we’re relying on their knowledge.

Silvia Scopa
Okay great. Thanks Niall and sorry, Mariangela for missing your question. So  no one else asked, any other question? I think we can end the event here. Thank you Colin for participating and to Gemma and Taylor and to everyone who attended this event. And as I say, at the beginning, we have another surgery on the 11th of February that is going to be focusing on heritage and community and the third one in March that is going to focus on the development grant and building repair again, so keep an eye out and thank you again for participating