RAF Real Estate
 

On one of my fairly frequent visits to Cranwell recently I found I had the time to re-live my youth (or at least 24 weeks of it) by taking a walk around the College side of the Station and was pretty dismayed to see the state of some of the real estate. Gone was the 9-hole golf course (ok..pitch and putt) which was now completely overgrown, the Qaboos facade looked like any maintenance has long been forgotten (peeling paint, weeds in the guttering, rust spots on the ironwork) and the cricket square on the Orange, which I understand was only installed at some expense a few years ago, appears to have gone to seed. On speaking to some of the youngsters (i.e. cadets) it also became apparent that there was no heating in CHOM and certain classrooms in Whittle Hall were out of bounds when it rained due to leaks in the roof. Not a great first impression for those joining the Service and the many visitors to the RAF's spiritual home - I wonder if Sandhurst and Dartmouth are suffering a similar fate? On a more positive note Cardiac Hill is still there but not as steep as it was in my day!!

You ought to have tried 3 years of it. Though on the plus side the heating never failed in South Brick Lines (aka Junior Entries') one just put more coke' on the stove.

Yes - it used to be really really steep!

What is/was Cardiac Hill? My memories of Cranwell were that it was flat - Running round the North Airfield for the Knocker Run did, however, feel like running up Everest - just more horizontal!

Surely not, new build, refurb, upgrade are usually precursors to closure of transfer to the Army.

Back in 1973, over the Christmas Grant, some bright spark decided to save money by turning off the heating. I had to come back a day early due to the vagaries of airline travel at that time of year and the only way I could keep warm was to go out in my car - the shops were all closed otherwise I'd have bought a fan heater. Food? Forget it, the local pub was the only option.

When the heating came back on, the cold soaked walls streamed with condensation, pipes burst and it cost a fortune to rectify all the damage in College Hall. Many times the perceived cost savings of turning off the heating.

Appalled to hear about the current state of the place from Tedderboy, the only way to fix it would be to announce a Royal Visit in the early New Year, perhaps.

I'm with you, Old Bricks - maybe 'Cardiac Hill' is the outside edge of Bristol Woods?

At the back of the mixed use playing fields around the pavilion, and behind the 'confidence course' is a small thatch of woods. This slopes down into what I'm guessing was at some point a river bed. One particular path cuts down at quite a steep angle. Dips down around 3-5metres. Doesn't sound much, but after a few goes it hurts.


I went through Cranwell in 09/10. Doesn't sound like anything's changed. The square on the orange was there, but never used (and due to injury I was re-coursed so was there throughout the summer in '10). I do recall some people playing golf on occasion though.

Just before I retired we had a new Regional Prime Contract. The aim was to maintain 1st rate buildings, to improve 2nd rate to 1st rate and stop 3rd rate deteriorating - or something similar. The contract was fixed price over 5 years. We thought Christmas had arrived early.

For the first year things that had previously been degrading were repaired, painted, replaced etc. At the end of year contract review a big part of the contract was chopped to save money. Needless to say the book cost of the saving was not passed on by the contractor who had bid for a 5-year fixed price.

I don't know what happened in years 3-5 or indeed for the next PPP round.

I was at Cranwell 2008-2012 and I used to, as an additional duty, maintain the golf course with the help of a former serviceman. We purchased mowers etc but the reason it fell into disrepair is because the overall maintenance of the area was removed from the grounds contract and therefore it was impossible to keep at a reasonable standard. I used to get a landrover from MT and pull the grass cutter along behind on the fairways and the other chap would use the motorised smaller mowers to look after the greens and the areas around the bunkers. Although not the most challenging 9 holes, it was a great little facility which was regularly used. Very sad....

I'm not sure the state of the infrastructure, of which an applicant will know nothing about, is the problem.

Anyway, like a lot of people, I'd just like heating at work that is functional throughout the winter!

A former cadet of mine who's been through Cranwell quite recently said some of their course looked forward to being under canvas, rather than in the mess.
He was going Reg though, so maybe can't be trusted..!

One of the first things I bought was a fan heater. It came in very useful year after year when heating was switched off at the official season change dates regardless of how cold it was. With everyone else i knew having theirs on full blast, the electricity cost must have exceeded the central heating cost many times over.

The thought of Old Bricks moving at anything faster than an aimless meandering stroll challenges the imagination , indeed these days he might well be terrified of Scrotum accidentally overturning the chariot whilst pushing him up a gentle slope.
Beags, I've spoken to Nurse and she assures me that she wraps an extra tartan rug over you on chilly evenings to stop you getting flashbacks to 1973...
Then there was the 98 cadet who was seen finishing a cross country run wearing a ladies' bra over his P.T. Kit

"I'm training for the Knocker trophy, Sir !"

[QUOTE=VintageEngineer;10304673]One of the first things I bought was a fan heater. It came in very useful year after year when heating was switched off at the official season change dates regardless of how cold it was. With everyone else i knew having theirs on full blast, the electricity cost must have exceeded the central heating cost many times over.[/QUOT

Detached to Station X any date between 1 Oct and 30 April:

Fan heater
Microwave
TV
Radio
Thick dressing gown
Teddy .............. perhaps not, Teddy too comfortable at home

Everything to do with infrastructure is a shambles, but to be fair on our lords and masters, they do know about it and agree that it is a shambles. The trouble is there is practically nothing they can do about infra since responsibility for it was taken away from the three services and vested in DIO, which is in the luxurious position of owning none of the reputational risk that its inadequacy creates. "Army housing in poor condition", "RAF runway late and over budget" etc. Never "DIO". There was much talk a few years ago about the services 'taking back control' (to coin a phrase) of their infra, but it's seemingly come to naught as all the potential work-arounds to DIO's uselessness currently fall foul of policies owned by.... yes, DIO.

To be even more fair, it's not just Defence that suffers this BS. The council round our way has been trying for over 20 years to get a moderately-sized infra project done. Four years ago the council leader got so fed up with the continual delays for re-costings, tendering and other BS that he truncated the process against the commercial officers' advice and finally had the bloody thing built. The bill came in 33% overspent. This was duly seized upon by the local press, expecting the politician to be pilloried, but far from it - he's been showered with praise from all sides. The public view appears to be that the cost would have escalated by a similar amount over the last four years whether the thing was being built or not, so the money being set aside over the next couple of years to pay back the overspend would probably have been spent on the project anyway. Nice to see some bold action from a politician!

And I'm not sure that this will actually improve things... https://www.gov.uk/government/news/m...supply-base--2 As soon as someone says vision and programme of major projects you know it's going to be a cluster.

The description of RAFC Cranwell is a sad tale, but Whittle Hall was in a poor state in 2014 last time I visited. But it is the same across the estate (apart from the new gin palaces, but how long have they actually been built to last for?!).

That was pretty standard on many of the stations that I was on, for both officers and airmen. I was in surplus MQs on several occasions and loved it as a change from mess accomodation: all the joys of living out without the costs and commute.

I was a pilot while I was serving and have never worked in DIO, or DE, or anything else infra-related, but I am reliably informed DIO uses lots of civil engineers, including those of the RE! The issue has always been lack of investment, or rather a budget that was not big enough to do everything that was required. From the HQ level, the infra budget was an easy target, so it was inevitably reduced - the station I was on was given 10% of the 'operationally essential' works budget one year. That meant prioritising in the certain knowledge that deferred work was only going to get more expensive. When faced with a choice between doing preventive maintenance on a flat roof or sorting out the erratic power supply to the runway lights, it isn't actually a choice at all.

The system has never been perfect (and often far from it) but it remains to be seen whether managing spending priorities from HQ AIR will have the impact that people seem to be looking for.

My wife was moved out of the WRAF wing of her Mess in 1980 due to overcrowding and infrastructure issues. Her intelligent stn cdr designated an empty MQ as a Mess Annexe for her use, which we would both occupy a few months later as our/her MQ. Thanks, Boss!

Mate of mine, after leaving the RAF as a stacker, joined the Prison service and was posted to Pentonville......the accom provided was a block of flats which was originally Met Police married, then single, then Prison service married, then single accom .......the electricity and heating bills for the flats exceeded those of Pentonville by, ahem, "a considerable margin "

In the late 1970s I was in MQs at RAF Odiham. The garden backed onto that of another MQ on a parallel road. It was empty for a while then allocated to three single officers (the infamous, now sadly late, Scotty Weir being one of them).

Shortly after they moved in I noticed a large grey horse with its head over my fence, eating my flowers and the near edge of my lawn. The singlies had borrowed it from the Boss's wife to "mow" their back lawn and it obviously decided the grass was greener.....

ShyTorque are you sure it wasn't a unicorn eating roses? As recounted by James Thurber....

In the airmans quarters there was a garage block and a cable appeared over the fence, investigation revealed a fridge freezer and fridge in one married couples garage being powered by an extension cable slung over the fence into a singly block and plugged in with a do not remove label by the socket.

Was that one of the horses that used to reside at the end of the lazy runway as you wandered round the peritrack to the OCU? I used to give them the odd apple on the way to work.

Fortissimo, IIRC all works costed and the wush list forwarded to Infra where they were categorized A-D. A was sub-divided along the lines of H&S and operationally essential. The higher command would then divide the cake much as you describe.

Category D was 'never in a month of Sundays after a blue moon'

However if the pot was large enough you might 'lose' a Category A works (change of requirement) and move that door that the new Stn Cdr didn't like :). Then there was that annual end of year surplus; spend it or lose it. The footpath across the MQ sports pitch at Lyneham for the 5th Nov bonfire springs to mind.

Managed decline of quarters
 

A couple of weeks ago we visited some friends in SFA (quarters) near London. The gas hob had been condemned and a small roof leak- where the flashing had moved because the mortar on a chimney had failed - had not been replaced or fixed after 7 weeks. The small leak has got bigger and now the ceiling in a bedroom will need replacing. It transpired that the helpline call handler didn’t know what roof flashing was, so didn’t assign a priority to the job. With the gas job similar ignorance was displayed. The call handler said you can use the other three gas Hobbs if you wish. It never dawned on the eu staff rhat you can’t use acondemned gas appliance. I’m so pleased that we broke away from quarters years ago.

WUH, same with an electric hob at Halton a few years ago.

But with contract maintained housing you have some strange anomalies. At Shriv one patch had roof tiles and ridge tiles falling off H&S didn't seem to apply. At an adjacent patch maintained by Servo they painted the dummy grey plastic chimney pots clay red.

ORANGE.
ORANGE

OMQs at Rheindahlen c. 1976.

Carpets.
Loose covers for chairs easy.
Curtains.

And when one went on a safari supper round the patch

ORANGE.

We have hated orange ever since.

MQ maintenance
 

Marching in to our quarter at the REU,as it was then, I enquired of the families officer the possibility of redecoration, "no funds Paul, got plenty of paint, you can do it yourself if you like". Which I didn't.

Fast forward a month or so and the FO's car appears in my workshop for routine maintenance.
I place 5ltrs of oil, and a set of filters on the passenger seat and instruct the MT controller to return it to the FO, with my compliments, he's welcome to to use a bay to do the work.
Phone call 10 minutes later, "Touche, send J (SWMBO) round to look at some colour charts"
Quarter redecorated and a terrific ongoing relationship with the FO for the next 8 years
PM

Funding for Infra was largely delegated back to the TLBs on 1 April this year, so the RAF is now in control of some its budget and the planning for Infra.

The WOs & Sgts Mess is what used to be Trenchard Hall Officers mess. The original NCOs Mess is now the Stn Education Centre.