8.45: Arrived at work.
Signed into computer and was instructed by Neil to check emails as he had forwarded on one he had received. It was from the BBC National TV & Radio for the 6 o clock news. It stated that the reporter is planning to do a story looking at tower block safety in the light of the fatal fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell, South London, 2009 in which 6 people died (including two young children). At first, I was shocked that it had taken this long for the case to reach a verdict and that the BBC has only recently decided to make a report on it. Neil explained that these sorts of things take an extremely long time to reach a conclusion.
The BBC were keen to know the situation "RE: safety of tower blocks in West Midlands" as there is a large number of this type of housing in the surrounding area.
Here are the questions the BBC wanted information on:
1.) How many social housing tower blocks have been inspected between the years 2010/2011? Latest figures would be appreciated?
2.) From your most recent figures, i.e the best part of the past 6 months, how many faults have been found in your audit of social housing high rise buildings?
3.) How many enforcement notices have been issues, RE: Warnings or Enforcement notices issued against them on safety grounds and specifically fire safety grounds?
4.) What have local authorities told you they are doing about this?
Neil and I then compilled the answers to the questions with the use of statistics (which are now a crucial source of data used by the WMFS) and the help of the station commander from Highgate Station. I was not able to disclose the information given as it is confidential. All I can write here, is the notes I wrote down in my workbook.
Legislative Fire safety function inspected 17 of 947 between 2010-2012. 6 of these were satisfactory and 11 were unsatisfactory (this does not mean that the blocks needed to be closed down, however fire safety warnings were issued around the building) As more of the high rises had an unsatisfactory standard it is no wonder that the BBC reporter felt it important to carry out such an investigation. The low amount of high rises inspected by the WMFS was exceedingly poor, so instead of answering specifically about tower blocks, Neil included the statistics of ALL social housing that was in the area making the number sufficiently higher.
*I learnt that often press officers answer the questions to suit them to remain proactive to the organisation.
9.34 I went on a tour with Justine around the entire building. Learnt where Registry was which I was told I needed to remember as I was going to be spending a lot of time collecting parcels and letters there.
Now I had a basic idea of where specific areas were in the building I helped Justine sort through the long service pin badges and issued them out to work colleges from different departments.
I have now also learnt my own departments drink preferences based on the vast amount I seem to be making today:
Neil: Decaff tea, no sugar, splash of milk
Justine: Coffee, Milky, No Sugar
Alison: Hot Water, Own Teabag
Matthew: Coffee, 1 sugar, splash of milk
Jeremy: Coffee, 2 sugars, black
Ty: ....doesn't drink hot drinks :)
10.09: Asked to write my first tweet and Social Networking had never seemed so scary to me...
WMFS were working with Kerrang Radio on a charity event which requested us the accompany their team to visit the Childrens Home (for disadvantaged children) and give out Easter Eggs, with the possibility of delivering approximately 500 eggs! The fire service were also to take one of their engines for the children to have a bit of fun with.
I decided to write down a few ideas on Microsoft Word so I didn't make any mistakes.
Here were my three choices:
"Hippity Hoppity, Easters on it's way today"
"Easter Egg-citement this afternoon!"
"Another Eggscuse for chocolate today"
I used the middle one and made sure I # kerrang radio and wolves council
10.25: Started working with Elaine who is Head of the Campaign team.
Learnt that her main role was to educate people on community safety through advertising.
Her main point of call was for domestic fires (in homes)
Here is a sheet to show the WMFS targets met within each performance indicator:
As can be seen above, the WMFS are very effective in reaching their goals. Elaine then went over with me the "home safety check" which she had written up to take into homes in areas that are at a higher risk of house fires.
These are some of the questions asked, see above.
I was then shown some statistics of the areas in the West Midlands which had the most frequent fires and she told me some of the most common types of fires. Most were caused by leaving a saucepan on the oven and from cigarettes. It is Elaines job to ensure she brings these numbers down. There is no laws within a persons home that can stop them living how they do, so they must be educated in a neutral way about the risks they are causing to themselves, their families and their possessions.
Elaine is control on the Stay Safe section on the WMFS website, this is available to the public and aims to teach people how to react in certain situations and their environments.
I was given a campaign plan calendar which highlights key events which take place throughout the year which create a higher risk of fires, such an bonfire night and new years. This calendar is made for awareness but also to help Elaine meet the deadlines for appropriate timing of of her advertising.
Here are some examples of successful types of advertising:
They have a large budget to help with this.
* I learnt that due to the recession, the team had been cut. Before it consisted of 4 other photographers who all got made redundant.
1.30: LUNCH
1.58: Worked with, Ty who is the Graphic Designer for the Marketing sector. It is his job to manage the other graphic designer, Dave and Aaron the photographer. He needs to make sure they meet their deadlines and produce their work to the highest standard as it often appears on posters,newspapers, adverts and billboards around the city.
I was shown spreadsheets he used to keep job lists that are in process and how its a necessity to keep everything on record of previous work and price lists.
He then showed me examples of the different styles of printing such as Lithographic and digital. I could see though it was more expensive, Lithographic was of a much better quality as less colours were saturated.
I was then shown the software the team use to edit their videos and images:
-Illustrator
-Indesign
-Photoshop
Ty uses Illustrator the most as it uses a Vector Graphic unlike photoshop. This means the image can be manipulated to any size which comes in handy when they making such adverts as a 40 page billboard as pixels aren't lost.
* I learnt that within a business it is vital to keep a list of contacts. For this example, it was with printing as it can be very expensive especially in the large quantities and quality the WMFS use as they get discount.
Here is an image of the form each person must fill out in order to apply for the teams services. They receive new projects every week, so often the waiting list can be quite long especially with such a short amount of staff now.
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