NEC team takes up hammers and drills for charity office refurb

A team of NEC Birmingham volunteers have swapped their day jobs for hammers and drills to help refurbish the office of disability charity, Disability Information and Advice Line (DIAL) Solihull.
 
Using skills from across the business, the NEC gave disabled volunteers and staff at DIAL Solihull, a near neighbour of the NEC, keys to their newly-refurbished office. After five weeks of hard labour the NEC team were on hand as the Mayor of Solihull, Councillor Irene Chamberlain, officially re-opened the office on 19 December.
 
It was a welcome Christmas present for the DIAL team; volunteers have been coping with the cold in the formerly non-insulated building, forced to have confidential conversations in the open shell of the office, and using bathroom facilities that were not even compliant with disability regulations. The makeover means that the DIAL team, who help more than 300 disabled people and their carers every month, can run their information and advice service in a more comfortable environment for the workers and their many visitors.
 
Led by the NEC’s Operations Manager, Gary Masters and delivered by engineering project managers Andy Mullan, Dean Westbury and Ian Booth, the volunteers from the NEC spent hours ripping out old fittings andfixtures and completely re-vamping the space.
 
“The NEC welcomes more than two million visitors a year and as a business we see ourselves at the heart of the communities around our site,” MD at the NEC, Kathryn James, said. “Being a good neighbour is an important part of our company values and we were delighted to help with this project.”
 
DIAL Solihull began life as a telephone service and grew into its current base to offer free and confidential advice on a range of issues affecting disabled people and their carers. Manager of DIAL Solihull, Alice Singleton, said: “We are thrilled with our wonderful new office and we cannot thank the NEC team enough. We’ve come such a long way since DIAL began – some 27 years ago when a group of disabled people attended the same Daycentre.”
 
As well as voluntarily giving time and resources, the NEC team is also fulfilling the organisation’s green credentials by returning all waste materials to the NEC site and recycling all appropriate materials at the venue’s waste pre-treatment centre.
 
Photo caption: NEC officially hands over DIAL’s refurbished offices with the Mayor of Solihull. L-R: Dave Pinwell Sustain CEO, Andy Mullan – NEC Project Engineer, Dean Westbury – NEC Project Engineer, Stephen Willey – NEC Group Chaplaincy, Robert Chamberlain, Mayor of Solihull’s Escort, Alice Singleton – DIAL Manager, Kathryn James – NEC MD, Cllr Irene Chamberlain, Gary Masters – NEC Operations Manger (behind Mayor) and Paul Thandi – NEC Group CEO.
 
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