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01 Feb 2013

QEM Solutions Open New Office!

Despite the current climate, QEM Solutions have defied the odds; we’ve outgrown our current office at Broomlands House and have moved into a new Head Quarters just around the corner!

The new office has been invaluable to QEM Solutions and has enabled us to develop a hub for the QEM team to work as one and strategically manage the business.

The office itself is one of five beautiful courtyard dwellings which used to make up the stables of the grand Telford House. Hmmm, Telford… that rings a bell. Thomas Telford! One of Britain’s greatest Civil Engineers! That’s quite apt then isn’t it!?

History lesson now; the main house and stables were constructed by Thomas Telford in 1822 as part of his contract to build a new road from Carlisle to Glasgow, requiring the provision for a Post Inn halfway between the two cities. Being engineers, we wanted to know more about the construction of the road so we’ve done some digging and found the following extract from www.engineering-timelines.com.

The new road’s longitudinal elevation ranged from near sea level to nearly 305m above it at the Beattock summit. A ruling gradient of not steeper than 1 in 30 was adopted, involving extensive cut-and-fill and 15 large bridges.

The general specification called for the main carriageway to be 5.5m wide, to allow two mail coaches to pass, with a crossfall of 1 in 30 from the centreline. Its construction consisted of Telford’s traditional hand-pitched bottom course of 180mm high stones topped by 180mm of broken stones less than 63mm in diameter. The roadway had a 2.4m wide extension on each side covered in gravel for use by horse and pedestrians, beyond which were the all-important side drains. The whole width of 10.4m was compacted with a heavy iron roller.

When QEM heard of this, there was no question that this location should become the new HQ; the summit of the Telford Carlisle to Glasgow Road! Let’s hope a bit of the Telford genius is still ingrained in the foundations of the building and QEM can draw inspiration from the great man himself!

With Junction 17 of the M74 nearby, the office has great motorway links and therefore is the ideal location to set up camp for the future. If you’re wondering how to get there you can download directions from our downloads page here and the address is below:

QEM Solutions Ltd.
1 Telford Mews,
Beattock,
Moffat,
DG10 9SG

P.S. We may be expanding again soon, so watch this space!

Reference

Glasgow to Carlisle road http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=1239