Construction appointed for high-rise blocks


Three high-rise blocks in Cardiff will be reclad by ISG, who have been awarded the contract by Cardiff City Council.

The tower blocks at Lydstep flats in Llandaff North had their cladding removed two years ago after it was shown that the material did not meet fire safety standards. After surveys and recommendations, the tower blocks will be re-clad with a ceramic brick-based cladding.

Other high-rises in Cardiff will be re-clad next, in a £17m phased programme.

Richard Skone, regional director for ISG, said: “The safety of residents has been the core consideration underpinning this project, after the council took swift and decisive action to remove the existing cladding scheme. 

“On completion, residents will significantly benefit from the improved thermal efficiency of the cladding system – with upgraded windows and balconies, which will also enhance the visual profile of the three blocks.”


Many construction contractors and clients require contractor staff to hold and display Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) smart-cards, which prove their qualifications, before allowing them on site.

Here at Time and Attendance Wales, we are an IT partner of the CSCS through our parent company, Tensor plc. This means that we can provide seamless integration between the CSCS smartcard and our WinTA.NET software, which provides time management, visitor/contractor management and fire/evacuation roll-call systems.

The integration takes the end-user form of a CSCS “card wizard”. This set of rules allows a company to quickly grant construction contractors recognition by and access to our hardware, such as clocking terminals, turnstiles, and door controllers. The wizard will run one of three scenarios when giving access rights to contractors. These are:

  • Contractors who are completely new to the system.
  • Contractors whose name exists on the system but their CSCS card has not been entered.
  • Contractors who are fully recorded on the system and have used their card at other sites, but are new to this particular site.

For each different scenario the wizard will guide the user through the enrolment procedure. The result is that:

  • The contractor’s CSCS card is read (using a USB card reader attached to a Tensor.NET Client PC)
  • Details are extracted from the card to update the contractor’s details within the system
  • Options such as a company, site, shift group and department are assigned to the cardholder

To make it easier to include new contractors in your site’s existing health and safety and security procedures, please contact us today.

We can handle any size site: our Enterprise software is able to perform for global, multi-site corporations with thousands of employees/users, while our Start edition helps small businesses with less than 50 users.