I am carrying on the saga of my career, and following on from the last chapter, I had just arrived in Singapore to start our prestigious project at the new horse racecourse.
I have really lost count of the number of trips we eventually made to Singapore, and it eventually became known as my ‘second home’.    And it really deserves a whole page on it’s own, so for now I’m going to skip forward.

We eventually completed the Singapore Turf project, which brought about additional work in the country.

The product was gaining momentum, and myself and a couple of staff members were spreading our wings further and further.   Eventually, my original companion retired, and just left two of us to do the work.

Between 1997 and 2012, me and my new fitter / plant operator completed work in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Singapore, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Ireland, Germany, and for the London 2012 olympics just to name a few.

One of my claims to fame was accidentally selling our product to Benfica’s Estadio Du Luz, for the Euro 2004.   Ironically, I had no clue who Benfica was and didn’t quite understand the excitement around the office when I informed them!

Back home, things were also changing.  In 2000 the company was split into two new businesses, and I was transferred from the original quarry to the new company, Ransomwood Estates Ltd. continuing my original roles and advancing our overseas business.  Over the next few years I also made some personal advancements, continuing my training  in my various disciplines, gaining a string of letters after my name – MIQ, MIQA, TechIOSH.

I also continued my involvement with Fibresand in the airports, working with BAE Systems, and contributing at the British Airport Group and sitting on the board of BASEA, another airport supplier organisation.

Ransomwood was basically born after we purchased an old hospital that had been condemned through subsidence.   But while we were waiting to quarry it, we let out some of
the less damaged buildings, and found that it was a lucrative business in itself.

At the same time the business park which we owned was growing in leaps and bounds, when the decision was made to sell the asphalt company in 2007.  This changed my focus, as we discontinued our ISO 9001 approval and my quality manager role disappeared more or less overnight, replaced for a short time with the environmental management system ISO 14001.

I had long asked for a position within the business park management, but not given anything more than the health and safety role that I had retained, but to be honest the role was much less involved – the risks on a business park were considerably less taxing than those in asphalt production or quarrying.

One of the roles that I continued to expand on was IT, and I introduced our first server, an old NT4 Windows Small Business Server (SBS) and an onsite exchange server which handled our mail.    I also looked after the ageing accounts PC’s, still running the prehistoric
unix based accounts programs my friend Rob had written back in the late 80’s during my time at the Sand Company.

It was time for a change and together with our new Estates Manager / Financial Controller who had just joined the company in 1999 as we split the group, we converted the company to Sage 200, and a whole new era of computing took off.

 Two new directors joined the company shortly after we had split the group, sons of the now
Chairman of the new company.   I knew them both from my sand company days.  The youngest had accompanied us for a short time on the large Singapore project, and the eldest I had assisted with some of his dissertations for a degree he was taking.

We needed to expand the park but at the time we could only get very poor broadband lines -3.5Mb maximum speed, and so to entice new customers the company took the bold step to invest in a 30Mb fibre leased line.    

We also introduced a new telephone system in 2013 which we could offer to prospective tenants.

At the start we had just 5 companies connected to our leased line and telephone system.

We installed fibre cables between two buildings on our park and built our first very small network.   Now, 12 years later, we have a full 1000 Mb leased line serving over 150 individual companies on our park, miles of fibre cables connecting every building on the park and over 200 handsets on our phone system.   

The fibresand business has slowly drying up.  New football turf systems were hitting the market, and our system became less popular.  Some of our key suppliers and partners have moved into different fields – forgive the pun.  And my early dreams of running Fibresand International from our Singapore office, and being involved daily in our airports division have faded into nothingness.  My job titled changed yet again, this time to Group Support Manager which better reflected my actual position, of supporting everyone else in their own roles.  Basically, if someone had a problem they couldn’t resolve, they would call me in to assist.

I also seemed to get the jobs that no one else wanted, and one of these in 2013 was overseeing the installation of our own water system.  I do love variety!

Oh, careful, this is starting to sound like a CV!

So its 2025 and we are now are right up to date.  Nearly 45 years of service (come July)  in so many roles over the years. 

And if I’m being honest, I’m tired.

I wonder if I ever made a true difference, and what my legacy might be when I finally retire.  Or will everything I worked on for so many years just disintegrate into oblivion?  What will I be remembered for?  Or indeed, will I be remembered at all?