Contracts Manager - Steeplejack
Pendrich Height Services

Mark W

00:00:02 Hi, I’m Mark W. I’m a contracts manager for Pendrich Height Services Limited. First and foremost is making sure all the contracts run appropriately and secondly would be to organise the men in a good manner. Safety is definitely a big part of the job in this day and age and most certainly all the men I send out to each and individual task has to be carried out safely.

00:00:25 I would say I was an average type of kid. Fear of heights, I didn’t know until I took the first day of the job. Apart from climbing trees as a kid, that was about my only experience of climbing heights.

00:00:39 I wanted to be a steeplejack when I left school. Yeah, it was something that I always looked at to be in life but in the back of my mind, could I actually carry out the task? Was I going to be scared of climbing heights that needed to be climbed? It was always a question mark in my life whether I could become a steeplejack.

00:00:58 My mother and father split up when I was a young boy basically and I was brought up with my father which I tend to find quite hard at times to live with. So it always appealed to me to be my own person in life and I always fancied working abroad and working in different locations throughout Britain and in Europe and it looked like my type of work. It was very much physically challenging and it was certainly something that I was looking at.

00:01:26 My first thoughts about the industry in general when I first made my way into the industry was that it was just going to be a piece of cake. Nobody knows what it’s like to climb the ladder until you’re actually up that height. First day, yeah, certainly I was very anxious getting into the steeplejacking industry and finding what it was all about, this height game, whether I know I had what it takes to climb these heights. It was certainly a scaremongering day. Everybody’s got an element of wariness to them and climbing up the ladders the first couple of days, yeah, a little bit wary but eventually you do get used to it. It’s like anything, riding the bike at the start everybody’s scared to a certain element but eventually once you get going you usually find your stride and you’re usually ok.

00:02:08 I think you come into your bubble, you know, you stop thinking about the falling from the height and the outside world. I think you become, certainly it’s a thing that comes within yourself and the fear sort of drops away. It’s like a barrier, once the fear is starting to go the confidence certainly starts to rise and I think once you do get confident, you do forget about the fear factor. Everybody’s got the things in life that they would like to do. Me, I would like to eventually have enough money that I wouldn’t have to work and go play golf every day. But unfortunately, no, I’m going to have to stay here for the time being and work hard and try and achieve my goals, which one of them is to make the company as efficient as possible and making sure all the jobs are done safely and that all my guys go home at night and myself included. That’s my biggest goal.

00:03:01 We’ve worked on the Scotts Monument in Edinburgh which was one of my main targets in the steeplejacking industry to work on. It’s very much a focal point within Edinburgh. Everybody stands back and looks up watching you as you’re working away. It’s absolutely great. If only just to work on one of the main monuments in Scotland but to work in your own home city which is usually a thing that we don’t do a lot of. We usually work away from home a lot.

00:03:29 The thing I like best about my job in particular within the steeplejacking industry is the challenges that sit in front of me from day to day. Not one job’s the same. Not one job’s to be done in one specific time scale. Every job’s different and most certainly that’s the biggest challenge to my job and that’s the thing I thrive on a lot. ENDS