£1m Yorkshire big wheel boost for Kuwait children’s hospice

Doncaster-based WGH Transportation Engineering, which designs and builds leisure rides, inclined lifts and specialist public transport, is also close to completing work on a ride system for the Titanic Signature Building in Belfast, described as “a first” by managing director of WGH Andrew Howarth.

The ride will rotate and travel up and down, as well as travelling around a track, which he claimed has not been done before.

WGH secured the £1m contract to develop a ferris wheel at Byat Abdullah Children’s Care Hospice in Kuwait after children at the hospice expressed a wish to visit Disneyland. As this was not possible, it was decided a ferris wheel would fit the bill, as it could be enjoyed by a child in a wheelchair.

Marks Barfield, the architect behind the London Eye, was commissioned to produce a conceptual design, and WGH, which was one of the main contractors on the London Eye, was asked to help develop the concept into “an engineering reality”, said Mr Howarth.

He said: “The concept design began early in 2010 and the contract was placed in January 2011. By August, the wheel had been built on its side in our Carcroft factory.

“By the end of September, it had been trial erected at the fabricator’s site at Sandtoft and shipped in five 40ft containers off to Kuwait, arriving at the hospice in mid November.”

Mr Howarth said: “I and four engineers arrived in Kuwait, having more than a little concern on how to safely erect a 60ft diameter wheel, having never designed or built a ferris wheel before.” With the help of a team of seven Pakistani workers, the wheel was operating in 19 days, he said.

WGH, which has a turnover of around £2.25m and a head count of 10, has enough work lined up for the next two years, said Mr Howarth. However, he said the biggest challenge for the firm was finding people with the right skills set. The firm is having to turn work away because it can’t find engineers.

Mr Howarth said: “The biggest problem in engineering is the fact there are no engineers. We are desperate for design engineers, mechanical designers. We could get more work if we could get more design engineers.

“We are turning work away. And when we turn them away, they go abroad.”

He said he would like to take on two designers and a production manager over the next year.

Mr Howarth blamed the lack of engineers on the “collapse of British manufacturing”. He said: “It all started with Margaret Thatcher. She encourage the City to grow and manufacturing was the poor relation. And to be fair, Labour has not done anything for manufacturing either.”

WGH is due to hand over the project at the Titanic Signature Building in Belfast on February 24. The contract is worth £1.3m. Mr Howarth said: “It’s a six-seater vehicle and there are 11 of them, one of which will also carry a wheelchair. They will travel around a track 120m long and the cars at 360 degrees either way, and move up and down 4.5m, while going round in a circuit. It has never been done before.”

WGH will also be building a ride system through a science museum in Qatar.

Meanwhile, the South Koreans are building a 10km Personal Rapid Transport (PRT) system, for which WGH has done the design and track. Mr Howarth described it as a cross between “a horizontal lift and a taxi”.

The Middle East is a key market for WGH, along with Europe, Mr Howarth said. “The Middle East looks to have a lot of potential because they have got a lot of money and have injected a lot into leisure.”

Meanwhile, the UK is also investing in leisure, said Mr Howarth. He added: “There has been more activity in the UK since the euro’s exchange rate has gone sky high. More people are holidaying at home and the leisure market benefits from that. There’s certainly plenty of investment going on in the leisure market.”

WGH has created rides for places like Jorvik Viking Centre, in York, Cadbury World, in Birmingham, and Legoland in Windsor. Mr Howarth said WGH is “profitable”, but declined to discuss exact figures.

WGH sub-contracts the manufacturing of its products, but brings them into the plant for final assembly and testing, before erecting them on-site. It uses Atkins, in Rotherham, for its finite analysis. WGH is owned by its directors, Mr Howarth, John Martin and Tony Brown.

Trio now mining whole new seam

DIRECTORS Andrew Howarth, John Martin and Tony Brown entered a new line of work, from which they are still benefiting today, after the demise of the coal mining industry.

The three men sold their business, Gyro Mining Transport (GMT), which made locomotives and rope-haul transport systems for British Coal and several foreign mining companies, starting up WGH Transportation Engineering in 1989.

They carved out a niche in the design, assembly and installation of leisure rides.