Archives for August 2009

Who are you?
Meera Modi. I am a W1 team project assistant on an Extend Scheme placement. Extend is a BBC-wide work placement scheme arranged through BBC Academy. It offers appropriately experienced and/or qualified disabled people a great opportunity to gain six months paid work experience within the BBC.

What's your background?
Born and raised near London, I was sent to a boarding school for the deaf called Mary Hare Grammar School from the age of 11 years old, which is based in Berkshire. I was there until the end of my A-Levels. I believe that spending seven years in boarding school away from home has helped me to mix with people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures, as the students came from mixed economic backgrounds and even different countries, with some from as far away as India, Bangladesh and Malaysia. I then spent 3 years studying for my Multimedia BA (Hons) at the University of Nottingham Trent.

What Does Diversity mean to you?
Since you have asked me to contribute to this blog, I have been thinking about diversity and what it means. For example, I realise people have multiple identities. I myself could be classified as follows:
• Deaf
• British Asian
• Female
• Under 25
Diversity means "respect the difference" and I hope to explore some more of my experiences both in life and at the BBC on my Extend placement in a series of blog posts between now and November.

The BBC really tries to be as diverse an organisation as possible but it's not easy. Part of my role here is to champion diversity across the Operations division and as such I try to understand diversity by looking from different perspectives.

How can I do this effectively and yet make it useful for others? Well, as luck would have it, I have been able to recruit the support of a very bright and sparky young lady, Meera Modi, who has agreed to do some guest blogs with me.

Meera joined the W1 team below on an Extend placement scheme recently and she is quite a special lady as she has not let her deafness hold back her ambition. I'm delighted that I have persuaded her to share her story with us and I hope this will give us a better understanding of how a deaf person gets on with their life.

For those of us with the use of all our faculties we have no idea of how life is for somebody who doesn't. We may feel awkward when faced with dealing with somebody who is deaf or blind or may not be able to use their limbs. What do you do? How do you react? What do you say? How do you avoid making a faux pas or, as I would say, putting my size tens in?

Well, over the next few weeks, Meera and I are going to have a chat via the blog - an experiment in communicating which enables us to overcome the barrier of not being able to hear. I'm going to learn more about how to communicate and Meera will be able to bring out a range of interesting experiences and opinions from her perspective.

Why don't you join in and ask questions you have been meaning to ask for yonks but never had the opportunity or the gumption before? We all may learn a little about how diverse this world of ours really is.

I attended the fifth Silver Awards lunch in Showstoppers, Television Centre on Monday 24th August and wanted to let you know a bit more about this customer award scheme which was established by our service partners, Johnson Controls, to recognise excellent performance and celebrate success. Across the BBC Workplace teams in London and Scotland, Bronze Award winners are nominated by colleagues and customers for outstanding service and should all feel very proud of their achievements.The lunch is a way of celebrating recent Bronze Award winners, and was also attended by senior members of the account management and BBC Workplace team. All Bronze nominations from the previous few months were put forward for careful consideration and, although the standard was very high overall, it was decided that 3 winners were particularly deserving of the Silver Award. They are:

Shah Mallya, BMS Engineer:
Nominated by Malcolm Allen, BES Operations Manager, Television Centre.
"Shah is one of the most respected members of the engineering team. A very dedicated person who leads by example and whose work is in great demand across the whole account ..... Shah works tirelessly for long hours, many outside of his normal working day without a thought for himself. Shah should receive this award for his outstanding contribution and dedication to the engineering team and BBC business and broadcast continuity."

Zina Craker, Lead Receptionist, White City:

Bush House Security Team:

An incredible 201 bronze awards and 15 silver awards have been presented since the beginning of the scheme in March 2007 and the standard of the nominations has always been remarkably high. To nominate a member of staff that you feel is deserving of a customer service award, please email the communications team with details including any supporting feedback comments. Well done everyone!

Workplace has a wide and diverse workforce and as the holy period of Ramadan starts this weekend, I just want to wish all Muslim colleagues a peaceful Ramadan. For non-muslim colleagues, I have found the BBC Birmingham Ramadan 2009 pages to be excellent source of information if you would like to find out more - do check them out.

I have always been interested in learning more about the various peoples that share the earth. I think it's important to build our understanding of different approaches to day to day living, so, this weekend I intend to learn a bit about Islam.

The BBC Diversity Centre is always a good source of info, but you can also have a look at the Idiots Guide to Ramadan, an informative and interesting page written in an informal style by Adam Yosef, a site user from BBC Birmingham.

The Workplace Health & Safety team are always on the look out for any hazards around the BBC's buildings. One of their members, John Blades, spotted this unusual character munching on the bergenias outside the Workplace offices at White City. It is a Vapourer Moth Caterpillar and may look pretty frightening as a caterpillar but it turns into a small brown moth.

Link to UK Moths

Link to info about Vapourer Moth on Natural England

All this talk about our sometimes hot, sometimes not summer, reminded me of a remarkable experience I had when I made my trip to Lesotho in February 2009. On the last day of our visit I was up in time to catch the dawning of a new day.

Looking back on that morning which marked the end to a memorable trip to Maseru I was struck by how beautiful the world is and whilst there is a lot of trouble and sadness around, one should take a minute to look around you to really see what's going on - as I mentioned to my fellow traveller at the time the scene in the photograph has played out for millions of years and its still a picture to marvel at! 

It was also a beautiful day here in White City today (a one day heatwave?) and we saw many staff catching some rays on the grass out front and on Network Central (the 'pavement' between White City and Media Centre), enjoying a picnic lunch and even playing some boules...

The exploits of our intrepid adventurer Rod Hogg are remarkable and I just wanted to highlight some of his achievements.

His plan for 2009 is to see the summit of Kilimanjaro (Jan), Denali (Mount McKinley,Alaska) (June) and for dessert Mont Blanc  - he ascended Denali on 13th June and in fact he's just back from successfully climbing Mont Blanc 

How does the man do it? Rod has had a long term ambition of climbing Denali which for many mountaineers is almost as difficult as Everest! It seemed only sensible therefore to add in the other two for good measure.

The Denali adventure required a lot of support and Rod has asked me to thank, on his behalf, all those who supported him both before and during the expedition. It has been quite an adventure and he has raised in excess of £700 for Children In Need. If you would still like to contribute to CiN please follow the link to https://www.mycharitypage.com/RodneyHogg/

As for his latest exploit that of climibing the highest mountain in Western Europe he tells me that it went very well. I suppose, given his various training runs leading up to this, one might assume that this would be a walk in the park for Rod. However mountain climbing requires a lot of training and team work - if you get it wrong the consequences can be catastrophic!

Rod tells me that it's essential for the team to work together: it's important that the team is built around people you can trust, form a bond with and recognise that effective team working is about recognising that a good team is only as strong as its weakest link. 

Rod and his teammates have been very successful and much of this has to do with knowing the importance of good team work! - Something for us in Workplace to ponder on?

A few weeks ago I had, what was for me a somewhat unusual, opportunity to attend the AC DC concert at Wembley Stadium. I'm not really into heavy metal music but being a teenager in the 70's I had a vague recollection of this amazing group. I was also interested in how Wembley deals with largescale events and if there are any insights for how we at Workplace do things.

I was intrigued by the fact that as the band have been on the go since 1973 could they really perform like they used to when they were in their prime?

There is no doubt that the description of their being the "godfathers of hard rock" is well and truly earned

Moving to things closer to home - I have to say that the way the music and stage show was set up, operated and de-rigged entranced me. I focused on the end of the show - whilst the show itself was amazing, it was made all the more memorable by seeing how the back of house team at Wembley managed to cope with 60,000+ fans and how they started stripping the soundstage within 5 minutes of the last encore! Most of the many tons of rubbish had been gathered within half an hour. It was a most remarkable example of teamwork and coordination.

A enjoyable night out with a fantastic stadium and a great day to end the week. Lots of food for thought for how we work together as a team and how to get things done on a large scale in a safe and sustainable manner.

We were most amused to hear about an unexpected visitor to White City - looks like some other bloggers have also picked up on it - find out more below 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2009/07/when_urban_foxes_go_bad.html

and some pictures on Flickr here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bowbrick/sets/72157621619148431/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bowbrick/sets/72157621636683543/

With much debate at the moment about global warming, reducing our carbon footprint and finding ways of generating clean electricity, I have mused that there must be a smarter way of solving this conundrum. One thought I have had for a long time (probably from when I first visited North Africa) was using solar power generated in the Sahara. Well, I was pleased to read in the Economist an article entitled - "The Start of Something Big"

This reported on the prospect of some big guns (Siemens, RWE, E.ON and Deutsche Bank) coming together to build a chain of solar panels across the Saraha that would be connected to Europe and satisfy up to 15% of demand by 2050. Have a look at the clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXURvISjh2A&feature=player_embedded to get an idea of this interesting concept.

As the Economist states, a bold proposal, but to me it makes a lot of sense. It was made all the more striking by the quote from Dr. Gerhard Knies who asserts that;- " within 6 hours deserts receive more energy from the sun than humankind consumes within a year" For more information look at the consortiums website Desertec

It is lateral thinking such as this, that we need to embrace and encourage, as well as investigate how we can make real some of the more unusual solutions to problems we face in our day to day routines at work.

I had a walk around our Perivale project yesterday and thought you would be interested to see pictures. Thanks to Tony Rogers from our project managers Capita Symonds and John MacLeod from our contractors Mansell for showing me round.

It's a remarkable project which will provide a new home for the BBC's precious stock of archive material - when it's fully operational the total area of shelving will be equal in size to almost five football pitches!

Some of the archive has already moved and is now securely stored in modern film vaults that will ensure future generations can access the events of the last 70+ years.

It's a very complicated job requiring not only lots of construction work but the installation of six vaults over two levels which will provide nearly 85,000 shelves - if they were placed end to end they would stretch for almost 100 km, or in old money, 61 miles! Overall we're in good shape in terms of progress with thanks to James O'Brien for effectively steering the ship.

I wanted to write a post about last week's Operations Group Summer Event which was a great opportunity to meet the rest of the Group and find out more about what they do as well as spread the word about Workplace, the wide range of services we provide and projects we are involved with.

The Workplace stall had lots to offer, much of it benefiting Children In Need (we have an ambitious target to reach this year!). Many people, including Caroline Thomson and me (see pix below), turned their hand to cake decorating to represent a Workplace service. We raised a total on £69.73 to start us on the way to our ambitious target of £150,000, so, only £149930.27 to go!

We also launched the Workplace Design a Pudsey Sandwich Competition (entry form available on the Workplace website) which will see the winner's sandwich on sale at BBC catering outlets throughout the UK, with a proportion of profits from each sandwich sold going to Children in Need. Do encourage your colleagues to get involved and have a go yourself - you can enter as many times as you like, with different ideas.

Some of the Workplace Comms team: Nicci, Lauren, Issy and Gareth

There was also lots of information from each of the Portfolios: W1, West and W12 and North, giveaways and Workplace Environment Team info.

The other stalls were also interesting and novel, including a giant Jenga from Strategy & Policy, graphically demonstrating how many things at the BBC are interconnected and vitally important to the organisation as a whole and the chance to meet some real life bats (and to hear their high pitched squeaks thanks to an ultrasonic earpiece) and their different droppings (!) - a unique display from the BBC Wildlife Fund, organised by BBC Outreach.

Other highlights included a chance to hear from Caroline Thomson about how we're doing, and how Operations are vital in keeping the BBC show on the road, even though we may not be directly involved in programme making; the 'battle of the brains' quiz between Department Heads where the 'boys' (me included) were thoroughly routed by the 'girls'; the chance to view entries from the Operations Photography Competition; some live music from recipients of grants from the Performing Arts Fund and Peter Salmon interviewing Nicky Campbell about his career, his experience at the BBC and thoughts and aspirations around the move to Salford. The highly enjoyable event finished with some refreshments and the chance to mingle informally with colleagues.

We've announced today that HOK has been chosen to supply the workplace and interior design for the second phase of the Broadcasting House development in central London.

The procurement process was led by Andrew Asbury from the W1 Project team. There was a fantastic response from bidders and we are confident that we've got a dynamic team to create a great place for BBC staff to work in.

HOK has extensive experience in interior design and workplace strategy. They've recently advised Guardian News and Media on its new working environment. Other projects they've been involved with include Cisco; Severn Trent Water; MTV; AOL; Bloomberg; Warner Music and Time.