AS SOMEONE WHO likes to get on with things, I constantly marvel about the way that such ingenuity is applied to stopping things from happening.

The lyricist W.S. Gilbert created an amusing scene in which policemen in Penzance, clearly terrified of being assigned the task of apprehending the local pirates, keep repeating the words ‘away we go!’ (to face the foe) whilst actually marching on the spot. During his time as Transport Minister, John Spellar MP was once heard to speak nostalgically of his earlier post in Defence, where once decisions are made the fellows in uniform move swiftly to action.

Not always though – some military experts proclaim that if war breaks out after a period of peace you must change all the generals. Different skills are called for in dynamic situations. Does the same apply in the field of public transport when the call for action sounds and the funds begin to flow?

For much of the late 1990s and the early post-Millennium period, the transport units of local authorities may be compared with an army during peace time: no money available for installing infrastructure projects such as tramways, but you keep everyone busy marching up and down, saluting and painting things.

When at last funding is available, the capability to get on with actually installing systems has been lost.

The officers just keep on singing ‘Away we go, to face the foe…’ but we must get five reports from the consultants first.

Here at Cradley Heath we have fellow feeling for a much cleverer and more significant innovating team than ourselves: the one led by Frank Whittle developing the jet engine in the 1930s. This very simple machine (compared with an internal combustion aircraft engine) enabled the Gloucester company to move swiftly during World War 2 from building ‘Gladiator’ bi-planes to ‘Meteor’ twin engine jet fighters. Amazingly, the jet engined Messerschmidt 252 was in full active service far sooner, even though it was in Britain that the engine was developed.

The parallel between the experiences of the Whittle team and ourselves is the foot-dragging by people in positions of influence which causes the engineers to spend more effort on trying to get an innovative product accepted than on the engineering itself.

At the end of the 1990s, after a frustrating session trying to deal with railway industry compliance, I wrote a short play with three characters: a regulator, his wife and the dog. On a Sunday morning, the regulator speaks:

‘It’s a lovely day, I must take the dog for a walk. But first I must go through the right procedure:

‘1. Do we have a dog? ‘2. Does the dog have up-to-date injections? ‘3. Does he have a collar? ‘4. Do the materials in the collar comply with British standards? ‘5. When was the collar last tested for wear and tear? ‘6. Is the name on the dog tag clearly readable? ‘7. Do we have a dog lead?’ Etc, etc.

Having finally completed the procedure he realises that lunch is ready so he lets the dog out in the garden instead.

As we settle down to a culture where the ‘process’ is seen as more important than the achievement, I ask myself, ‘How long before we hear of this brilliant transport idea which the Germans or Japanese have thought up?’

Cradley Heath, March 2005

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PARRY TECHNOLOGY CALLED IN TO ASSIST TSUNAMI RECONSTRUCTION

FEW NATURAL DISASTERS have caused greater shock or created more requirement for a vigorous rebuilding programme than the December 2004 tsunami. JPA’s Sri Lankan associates, HDL Construction, requested John Parry to visit the region immediately to assess the response which should be made, including provision of building materials production equipment and technical support services. The Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Mr Winston Cox, requested that JPA’s fact-finding visit should include seeing representatives of international and national development agencies, including branches of the Sri Lankan Government, to discuss possible scope for a Commonwealth intervention.

In the meantime, many enquiries are coming in from the tsunami-affected countries, some of which have already resulted in orders for building materials plants. These are being despatched as quickly as machines can be produced. Tsunami wakeup call.

Discussions being held about potential co-operation by the Sri Lankan army in the international reconstruction effort. Colonel Commandant, Corps of Engineers, Brigadier Sooriyaarachchi (left) and senior staff officers at Army Headquarters in Colombo on 25th January 2005 (photo Esther David)

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CARPET TRACK BOARD BIDS FOR BIG TRAMWAYS

AT ITS MEETING ON 1st March 2005, the Board of Holdfast Carpet Track Ltd, chaired by Peter Coates-Smith, resolved to focus the company's activities on the development of an alternative tramway infrastructure system for all light rail systems, including those that already exist in the UK. The principal challenge, the firm believes, is not the trams but the effect of road traffic on the new system.

The ‘Carpet Track’ concept is based on the award-winning modular HoldFast level crossings and the temporary tramways developed by JPA in the 1990s to allow PPM demonstrations, and it originated in efforts to provide tracks for lightweight, non-electrified systems like PPM. However, further benefits come from expanding the company's aims.

Any infrastructure system developed for conventional electric trams will be suitable for lighter systems. The cost of building conventional tramway infrastructure is extremely high (resulting in the British Government’s recent decision to withhold funding from several systems) and a more affordable alternative will be attractive for new construction.

Furthermore, some of the UK's most recent tramways are suffering from track problems so there is a market for replacement of infrastructure. The Carpet Track concept is based on kits for fast installation, causing less disruption to traffic and commercial activity. It will enable local authorities to build tramways without requiring complex Transport & Works Act approval.

HCT is now asking to be allowed to install a length of Carpet Track tramway in the surface of a busy road to obtain practical results for analysis.

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TRANSPORT COMMITTEE CALLS PARRY/HOLDFAST TEAM AS WITNESSES TO LIGHT RAIL ENQUIRY

Community Light Rail on the Chasewater Railway. Why can't it operate at Stourbridge?

JPM PARRY & ASSOCIATES Ltd and Holdfast Carpet Track Ltd were called to give evidence to the House of Commons Transport Committee on 14th March 2005. The companies were represented by John Parry, Caspar Lucas and Kit Holden. The Committee is enquiring into the future of tramways in Britain.

Barriers to innovation

Several issues were put before the Committee. The first was that the British government is seeking solutions to the problem of increasing unaffordability of urban tramway construction and the heavy losses incurred operating lightly used railway lines, but public sector agencies have failed to respond adequately to R&D investment in prospective solutions. Instead, they have allowed barriers to innovation to be put in place. This situation threatens the embryo manufacturing supply chains, which require tangible commercial progress in order to hold together.

The Committee is giving consideration to two objectives arising from the issues raised. The first objective is to secure an adequate public sector response to the initiative to develop shallow section tramway track by taking it through laboratory testing and on to a full scale prototype. The second is to develop the Stourbridge Town rail service into a Community Railway rolling stock ‘pilot’ using PPM vehicles.

The Committee gave sympathetic consideration to the points raised. The members acknowledged that the Stourbridge project is being held back in spite of the importance it holds as a trial. The companies pointed out that, as a result, national transport objectives were being poorly-served and supply chains put at risk.

It has since emerged that the latest objection from the rail industry relates to the crashworthiness of the vehicle. So again the facts have to be restated: there will be no other vehicle present on the line, which is separate from the rest of the network, and the effects of any possible collision with the end of line buffers had already been dealt with using the services of a skilled railway consultant whose recommendations had been accepted by both the Railway Inspectorate and Railtrack/Network Rail.

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TSUNAMI WAKE-UP CALL PRESENTS BUILDING CHALLENGE

Parry visit to Sri Lanka reveals parallel with Galveston catastrophe 100 years earlier

A striking example of how frame-built structures survived the tsunami in Sri Lanka: this house near Ambalangola lost all its ground floor walls but its upper section survived. (photo J.Parry)

THERE ARE NO living survivors of the tidal surge which devastated the coastal city of Galveston in Texas in year 1900, but one clear lesson from a disaster which claimed over 5000 lives was the relationship between how high the individual buildings were above sea level and the chance of survival of their occupants.

John Parry visited Sri Lanka 24 days after the event on Boxing Day morning 2004, when the violent movement of the sea bed during an earthquake off Northern Sumatra sent a wave across the Indian Ocean taking lives and livelihoods in seven different countries.

After the extent of the destruction in Galveston had been assessed, the city authorities briefly considered the abandonment of their low lying city, realising that the direct hit by a cyclonic storm which temporarily raised the sea level by more than a man’s height might happen again at any time. But then, with the typical ‘can do’ Texan attitude, they set about building an 18 mile long sea wall and – if this was not enough – organised the dredging of a huge quantity of silt and sand from the Gulf of Mexico to raise the ground level of the low lying areas by 13 feet!

During John’s 10-day visit to South Asia, which included a brief stopover in the Maldives, he looked for common features, such as distance from the sea, methods used for construction, orientation and shape of building and – most significantly – height of the land above sea level. A simple hand-held GPS instrument which picks up signals from geostationary satellites fixed longitude, latitude and elevation. That gave the clearest correlation. Along the coasts where the tsunami struck, if you were 15 feet above sea level you probably had your perimeter walls demolished and knee-deep floodwater in your house; if only 10 feet, substantial damage would have occurred.

Down at 5-6 feet, almost all buildings would have been completely flattened – but not every single building. In amongst all the devastation were several examples of buildings which, at first sight, the tidal wave seems to have left off its hit list.

Eastern Sri Lanka: houses flattened by the tsunami (photo J.Parry)	Salesian temple in Tamil Nadu, India: after collapse of the front section, the tsunami passed under the remaining structure (photo Din Bosco Publications)	Roof built on timber poles at Nilaveli - left in place while the walls collapsed (photo Esther David)

Closer inspection revealed that they had been struck with equal force, but – being two-storey structures and built using reinforced concrete frames – the ground floor walls between the frame had been pushed over by the rushing water which then passed underneath the upper storey.

Whilst people on the ground floor were swept away, those fortunate enough to be at the first floor level were safe – HIGH AND DRY.

A frame-built two-storey school in Sri Lanka: ground floor walls lost but upper floor survived (photo J.Parry)

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BUILDING FOR EXTREME SITUATIONS HIGH AND DRY in Mozambique

FOUR YEARS BEFORE the Asian tsunami, another great inundation by the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers caught the attention of the world. The first humanitarian effort to send helicopters to pull people off rooftops and out of trees was an understandable reaction.

Subsequent to the period of rescue, some agencies began to encourage people to move away from the low-lying land vulnerable to flooding. Rows of crude corrugated iron shacks were built on hillsides for quick-fix re-housing.

Parry Associates proposed a different approach, a locally-based means of constructing classrooms on reinforced concrete columns.

Under the local direction of the Wesleyan Methodist Church the new ‘High Schools’ are being built in village after village. At normal times these are two storey classrooms but, should the floods return, they provide a safe refuge not just for the children but for the community as a whole.

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HIGH AND DRY: A single frame to be finished using materials to hand	A vision of newly-built HIGH AND DRY house cores integrating into a small town

THE TSUNAMI CATASTROPHE has created a crisis of human settlement and livelihoods. The task that has emerged is to devise a means by which individual houses can have a robust core structure which withstands rushing water from storms inland or tidal surges from the sea.

Parry Associates have embarked on the design of material-reducing elements which, when brought together, realise a genuinely low cost method of building house frames.

New ‘Super Six’ roof tile design made from 10mm thick micro-concrete screeds. With four-point fixings, this product will stay in place long after metal roof sheets have been blown away	Domestic ‘waffle’ slab design reduces the volume of concrete in a conventional 150mm (6in) thick upper floor slab

These will have two storeys, applying the lessons from the Limpopo flood and the South Asian tsunami: the HIGH AND DRY construction system.

The new system continues applying the concept which emerged from JPA’s work with the Commonwealth Secretariat in West Africa: ‘Resource-Based Building’. This aims for construction at a high standard to suit the aspirations of the formal building sector but makes maximum use of the resources to hand in the locality: primary raw materials and local labour.

All elements of the new system can be produced on small-scale plants which local people can be quickly trained to operate.

Square-format shell blocks create strong columns by having steel reinforcement grouted in the corner rebates. The hollow centres are filled with rubble and sand	Special V-shaped steel reinforcements are designed to lie in the valleys between the plastic waffle moulds

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FIRST SUDAN ORDERS SENT ON THEIR WAY Four plants shipped - further delivery in preparation

Parry equipment being packed for post-war Sudan

THE FIRST RESULTS of JPA's efforts to assist in the post-war rebuilding of Southern Sudan (see Parry News 40) were seen on 16th March when four production plants left the Cradley Heath workshops.

The equipment is being sent via Uganda and will be used to produce roof tiles, floor tiles and exterior paviors in three areas of the country.

A British charitable foundation has funded three of the plants, which are now on their way to the College of Christian Ministries & Training and the Episcopal Church of Sudan's Vocational Training College, both in Yei, and to Humanitarian Assistance for South Sudan in Kajokeji County. The fourth, larger plant is for Africa Expeditions in Rumbek.

A fifth production plant, also funded by the charitable foundation, is being prepared for ATAK Construction & Building Supplies Ltd, a new organisation set up to supply building materials, provide training in Wau and Rumbek, and represent JPA in Southern Sudan.

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SUPPORTERS OF JPM Parry & Associates strongly believe that the company's approach to development is especially efficient in terms of the resources used. Modelled in part on other commercially-provided products and services which have led to worldwide small-scale industries, such as the making of clothes, they believe that our range of tools and machines for producing building materials could be much more widely applied if only there were a more vigorous way of accessing its clients.

While workers in UK government overseas employment or with the NGOs have the best possible intentions, very few see value in the connection between entrepreneurs in developed and developing countries. Discussions about fairer and freer trade concentrate almost entirely on South to North. Apart from their own services, everything that is supplied North to South seems to be seen as a development failure.

There are exceptions to this view, and the enthusiastic support of a small number of charitable foundations and generous individuals has helped to bring about the construction of schools, houses, clinics and workshops - and the creation of sustainable businesses - in some very poor countries.

A group of responsible and experienced individuals who are aware of JPA's work but are not from 'inside' the company are to meet early in April to consider the case for creating a new charitable entity. The new body will be principally engaged in encouraging an 'enterprise'-based approach to development, taking activities such as JPA's to the logical conclusion of stimulating valuable entrepreneurial activity by improving access to markets through technical support (including quality management), training and - in suitable cases - providing working capital.

A more detailed scope of work will emerge from the April meeting and when ready the new venture will begin publicising its intentions.

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THAILAND

The tsunami disaster of 26th December has resulted in orders for two production plants for Roman II roof tiles and a further two for Pantiles received via JPA’s Thailand associates CVBT.

LIBERIA

From Monrovia, Mike Sarco of CAII has ordered a starter pack consisting of a large format electric vibrating table for producing Roman II and Super Roman roofing tiles.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC of CONGO

For the first time in many years, JPA despatched an order in December to the former Zaire, where the Fondation Hanns Seidel is supporting production of Pantile and Roman II roofing materials.

Further interest has come from a Congolese-American who hopes to start a house-building venture in his country of origin.

TAJIKISTAN

A local organisation has indicated its intention to begin construction of water tanks in Dushanbe using the JPA curved interlocking block system.

SIERRA LEONE

Having taken delivery of a new vibrating table and accessories for producing ground paviors, Senesi Fawundu has reported that he is now inundated with orders from private individuals, in addition to agreeing a contract to pave the courtyard of a new hospital in the town. ‘I will remain with JPA forever,’ he writes.

ANGOLA

Ann Bouckaert of Ibis has written that the use of Parry tiles ‘is well on its way to have official approval as the recommended method to build rural facilities in Kwanza Sul Province. We have five schools finished and are starting another six this year’.

In addition, an order has been received from the German organisation Begeca for an HP500 machine to be used in Angola.

GAMBIA

Mr Adama Samba, an existing JPA customer, is already successfully involved in house-building along the new highway between Kairaba and Yundum airport, and is now responding to requests for re-roofing existing schools. Following the construction of over 100 new schools with Parry roofing technology by Swedish charity Future In Our Hands, it now seems that the other schools in the Gambia want the same type of roofing, which is cooler in the sun and quieter in the rain than the old corrugated iron.

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NEW TILE SHAPE WITH ‘EXTREME’ FEATURES

THE EXISTING RANGE of Parry micro-concrete roofing tiles comprises products that are calculated in numbers of tiles per square metre: small format Roman II and Pantiles (‘12’ and ‘13’); large format semisheets (‘4’ and Super Roman (‘8’).

During work on the ‘extreme climate’ building system a new product emerged to fill the gap between the semisheet and the Super Roman. The Super Six is the same length, uses the same roof structure and has the same side overlap detail as the other large format products, but covers a sixth of a square metre.

In order to withstand tropical cyclones, the new product has two lateral strengthening ribs, in which are embedded

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ARTIFICIAL MOONLIGHT Photo-voltaic street lighting

ONE OF THE WORLD'S most unexpected natural resources is moonlight - hardly noticed in the urbanised, industrialised world where there is so much artificial electrically-induced lighting that low night-time clouds turn orange.

But deep in the countryside at night - especially in a poor tropical country where providing power for street lighting would be out of the question, the light of the moon transforms people's ability to walk about.

The famous 18 th Century innovator-entrepreneurs and men of letters Josiah Wedgwood, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Joseph Priestley and Erasmus (grandfather of Charles) Darwin used to meet on certain evenings to discuss their world-changing ideas. However, such was the threat of muggers (known at the time as 'footpads') that the body they formed chose to meet only on nights when there would be good light. Meetings were held when there was a full moon, and they named it the Lunar Society.

JPA repeatedly receives overseas requests for a technology to create reliable illumination - not the full blast of central London street lights, but sufficient to see by when walking home on moonless nights. One existing customer, Senesi Fawundu in Sierra Leone, is desperate to get hold of a first set of equipment so he can install street lighting in the regional town of Bo.

JPA has been contacting firms which, when working in combination, can provide all the expertise needed to create a lighting system based on (1) photovoltaic cells to turn sunlight into electricity, (2) battery energy storage, (3) highly efficient light emitting diodes (LEDs) to create the artificial moonlight effect and (4) automatic switches to turn on and off at the appropriate time. JPA can take care of the construction of reinforced concrete street lighting columns using a precast technology recently perfected for the HIGH AND DRY concept.

Assembly of the supply chain for the lighting technology is being organised by Aura Corporation of Wolverhampton and JPA is organising the means to construct a five-metre tall lamppost. The exercise will reveal accurate information about quantities and costs enabling potential overseas collaborators to evaluate solar-powered street lighting as a business.

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FESTUS WORKS ON LIGHTER CLAY TILING CONCEPT

FESTUS VANDI, a technician from Sierra Leone who is undertaking a period of further training at Cradley Heath prior to carrying out technical assistance work in Africa, has identified inland areas of his country where the availability of locally grown firewood and good plastic clay makes a clear case for roofing with clay instead of concrete. As a result, he has been working on the detailing of ridges and hips to achieve durable watertight coverings for village houses.

In the picture, Festus is trial-fitting a curved ridge on to a special 'top row' tile with a closure detail on its upper edge.

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GOODNESS GRACIOUS...

PRODUCED FROM the continuing research and experiments into disposal of agro-industrial liquid waste into a useful form of fuel, this fireball effect comes from combining the waste with paraffin and spraying the mixture under pressure.

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LIGHT RAIL . . . WITH A SMILE Advertisement currently appearing in Local Transport Today

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