BAND OF BUILDERS TOPS £1,000,000 OF PROJECT DELIVERY VALUE
National construction charity Band of Builders and its community of volunteers and supporters has delivered a milestone£1m worth of projects.
The organisation, affectionately known as BoB to its near 50,000-strong community of volunteers and supporters, was founded in 2016 and has just completed its 27th project to help tradespeople battling illness or injury, making a life-changing difference to them and their families.
The latest project takes the equivalent cost of labour and materials in total to over £1m – with the estimated delivery value of an average project at more than £37,200.
Reaching the £1m milestone has involved 772 volunteers giving up their time for free on projects that took a total of 203 days and involved 18,087 hours of labour. Materials and support are provided by organisations and businesses across the sector who support the charity on individual projects or through ongoing partnerships.
BoB’s projects, which include renovations, adaptations or repairs to the homes of tradespeople affected by illness or injury, range in scale. The biggest to date was a complete reconfiguration of the ground floor of the home of plasterer Mark’s partner Cher Little in North Wales, who was left relying on a wheelchair after having her legs amputated. More than 75 volunteers answered the call for help over a 31-day period, with a delivery value of more than £102,000.
The smallest involved six volunteers in a two-day project over a weekend in Stoke-on-Trent just before Christmas 2021 to fix the leaking roof of the bungalow that 93-year-old former brickie Tom Knapper built in the 1970s for his family. This project had a delivery value of £2,250.
The project that saw BoB pass the £1m delivery value landmark was for Martin Wilks from Herefordshire, who was left paralysed from the chest down after falling off a stepladder in June 2018 and hitting his head on a concrete planter, causing a severe traumatic brain injury. This was the second in three project phases to help level flooring on the ground floor of the family’s home, as well as to widen doorways to make it easier for Martin to move around in his wheelchair.
