Message for Press staff and visitors

Message for Press Staff from Andrew Boyle

Dear colleagues

It is time to move back to The Press building!

I am pleased to report that The Press building, despite being over 100 years old, came through the 7.1 earthquake of 4 September with minor damage only.

As a precaution, we decided last Wednesday to evacuate the building.  Despite the 5.1 quake that morning and many more aftershocks there has been no further significant damage to the building.

The building has now been declared safe by independent structural engineers engaged by Ganellen (the building owners), Lewis Bradford Consulting engineers, and by a second an independent consulting engineering firm, Harrison Grierson, engaged by The Press.  I will post these more detailed reports to the staff intranet next week for those of you that wish to read them. In the meantime, I attach a report that summarises the measures taken to assess and ensure the safety of the building.

 As previously reported the damage sustained by the initial earthquake was limited to the outer wall that borders the payroll and Avenues offices on the third floor, the business writers section on the second floor, and the turret.  As well there was some superficial cracking of plasterwork.

 The turret has now been repaired and the outer wall by payroll and one floor below that in the news room, will be repaired over the next few weeks. 

To enable this to happen, these areas will be no-go zones clearly marked as such.  Further disruption to staff in the surrounding areas as repairs are carried out will be kept to an absolute minimum. As a further precaution the stone work on the façade of the building will be re-inspected brick by brick to ensure that any that might be partially-loose are attended to. The passenger lift has also been checked and is ready to operate safely.

 So after spending nearly two weeks working out of three different buildings, your homes, cars and city cafes it is time to get the team back together in The Square.

 The plan is to move the majority of our computers over the weekend so that we can be up and running without disruption on Monday morning.

 Commencing this afternoon, finance and the management team will move back to the third floor.  The Goclassifieds team and hub subs will work from Logistics Drive for their Sunday shift and our payroll team will remain at Logistics Drive for the early part of next week to ensure that we all get paid.  By Monday afternoon we will be operating out of The Press building once again.

 Your manager will go through the finer details of your department's shift with you.  Please advise your manager if you have any concerns about this plan.

 I would like to thank you all of you for putting up with such a major disruption, and for your strong spirit of co-operation in these trying times.  It has not been easy working in what has been less than ideal conditions.

 So it has been a remarkable achievement and a great credit to you all that we have continued to publish both online and in print with no disruption to our readers.

 I promise you that next time we move, it will be in an orderly manner into purpose built surroundings next year!

 Regards

Andrew

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