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Bill Ferrier is W M Donald’s longest-serving employee. In February 2019, Bill will reach the milestone of thirty years with the company.
Bill was brought up on a farm in Rora, north west of Peterhead. He remembers driving tractors from the age of 5, much to the understandable alarm of his mother. Since getting married, Bill has have lived in Longside near Mintlaw.
‘When I left school I trained originally as a fitter and mechanic. When I first joined W M Donald I drove a ‘rubber duck’, a tracked vehicle with rubber tyres. Most of my career has been spent working on excavators.
There have been huge changes in my time with W M Donald. Technically the biggest development has been GPS. Operationally, there is much more focus on health and safety than there used to be. This is a good thing, but I could do without all the paperwork!’
Bill is not the only member of the Ferrier family to work for W M Donald. His two sons, Michael and Raymond, and his nephew, Scott, work for the company and his brother, Graeme, is a subcontractor.
Lynsey, Bill’s daughter, lives in Australia and has twins. Bill and his wife, Avril, are flying to Perth at the start of 2019 for five weeks to enjoy the company of their grandchildren and the warm weather; temperatures can reach 30˚C in January!
Bill thinks it is unlikely he will reach the forty year milestone: ‘I’ve had thirty years of being up at 5 in the morning and getting home at 7. I’m 60 now and think it is probably time I started slowing down a bit!’
BILL WITH HIS RELATIVES
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FOR BILL FERRIER, W M DONALD REALLY IS FAMILY!
This is the first of an occasional series of articles on challenges facing W M Donald and the wider construction industry.
In this edition we are looking at the industry’s relationship with plastic and, more specifically, how we can be more effective in reducing plastic waste.
The tragic international images of marine life being suffocated by household and industrial plastic waste have put the subject on the national agenda. When one stops and looks around the sheer ubiquity of plastic, and plastic packaging in particular, is startling. Each day in the UK we produce 19 million plastic bottles!
At the extreme there are calls to move towards plastic- free living. However, this ignores the fact that many other materials – paper, aluminium, glass, cotton – also have a considerable impact on the environment. Without plastic we would need more land, more water and more fuel to create often less-effective alternatives. Plastic is an incredibly lightweight, durable and flexible material. In the food sector, for example, a move away from plastic would inevitably lead to greater food wastage.
The W M Donald position is that plastic of itself is not the problem. The challenge is how we manage our use of plastic more effectively so that waste, and the cost of waste, is reduced.
Looking at the construction supply chain, plastic waste is unwittingly generated at virtually every stage. Products supplied with unnecessary levels of packaging; over- ordering, and subsequent disposal of, unused materials and offcuts; over-specification; poor storage and handling of materials on site leading to damaged goods and so on.
CAN YOU HELP
US REDUCE PLASTIC WASTE?