Contractors
 

Hot off the press.

There will now only be two contractors working for Virgin Media... McNicolas and Fujitsu.

McNicolas will be taking over England and Wales and Fujitsu will be taking over Scotland and Ireland.

This should fall in place around March/April time.

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Not strictly correct.

McNicholas have South London, South West & South East

and

Fujitsu have Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North East

The other areas will be awarded by April. So there may be other contractors in the frame for those areas not yet awarded.

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I take it that is for Residential installs and has nothing to do with Business services ???.

The reason i ask is that we have not been told anything about this on the business side of VM.

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I stand corrected.

Not being in the office today, I didnt hear it direct from the horses mouth. It should be interesting to see what, if any, changes are made by these contractors.

---------- Post added at 13:01 ---------- Previous post was at 13:01 ----------

Ive not heard anything about business side of things.

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It covers Residential, Business Install and associated Civil work.

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Having been awaiting a business broadband install now for a couple of months, one of the excuses for delays (outside of weather, christmas, council permits - the list goes on), is a change of contractors. Thus whatever is going on would appear to affect all of VM's areas.

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some of the Map managers have been called to a meeting tomorrow morning It seems a big change is going on :erm:

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The main core of the "contractors" ie the installation guys stays the same no matter who the contractor is, they just work for a different company and they can even stay on their current employment contracts if they like.

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We know we are safe but obviously a few changes are going to be made, more so with management I would of thought, for all contracting companies across the country.

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All the main mangers are in the Birmingham yard today, lets hope Map Group Uk have lost the contract.

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does this mean no more Kellys?

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BREAKING NEWS:

MAP GROUP UK LTD HAVE LOST THE BIRMINGHAM CONTRACT, AVONLINE WILL BE TAKING OVER FEBRUARY 1st 2011. ALL managers in the Birmingham site have been put on 30 day notice

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Hi everyone, well I quit Avonline back about a month ago and yeaterday I had two phone calls from install techs saying that Avonline had lost the contract for Bristol for sure, but were also under the inpression they have lost the entire Virgin contract. One of the calls said that Mark Wyn (Avonline MD) had said himself about the Virgin loss, but I guess from the other posts it is indeed the entire contract has been lost.

The reason I quit if your interested, lo, tbh it's is one crappy industry to be in on the install tech side of things. Sub contract companys think they can almost make their own rules when it comes to hour's and work practice.

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Rumour has it, Kellys have packed their bags already. But you know what a rumour mill is like...

Wow, that is interesting. Alot of Avonline guys thought Avonline was knackered. Getting the Birmingham contract will be interesting since they lost it last time. But then looks like you got your wish MapRcrap ? :)

Im fairly certain that McNicholas has got Bristol, from what I've been told (Im in Devon...). I understand your reasons for leaving, I think most of us can relate that that beller!

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Are there any updates on what will happen with MAP in the coventry area?
will they be keping their contract??
MAP is a crap company, similar to how Beller described AvonLine!!
always think you dont have a life outside work! tell you on a friday you will be working monday which is the day off! not organised at all rubbish pay and the managers think they are better than you cos they sit in a n office all day!!
anyone know who will have the contract in gloucestershire??

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My understanding is that the contractors/business partners will not know the full extent of any area loss or gain until April. As one would expect people will be playing cards close to the chest.
I believe that VM are creating "super regions" with one contact business partner taking on both the residential and business work. Interesting times ahead and hopefully positive ones for the industry as a whole.

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Lets hope there are some positive changes coming. Alot of us can all agree that the industry could do with a shake up and moral could do with a good old boost!

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I agree Jay Jay and hope that VM will award the contracts to business partners who have the right managerial/corporate behaviours this time - and have evidence to support this - and not just who put in the lowest bid.

You just never know they may all just get it right this time.

In order to promote change one must first look to change them self!

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Anyone have an update on different regions ?

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Nothing has been fully confirmed yet, April onwards before we know more.

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Removed - I answered my own question ;-)

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Hi,

I'm hoping someone might have experience with working for McNicholas? I have recently had an interview with them as an installer in the South East (Southend-on-Sea) area.

I've heard some horror stories about Kellys but I'm struggling to find any information on McNicholas.

This would be a huge career change for me so any help would be great.

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They are an unknown quantity on the South Coast at the moment, although their Scotland/North East operations are pretty efficient.

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Thanks for the reply.

I've been reading through a thread on this forum about Virgin Media contractors (Kellys specifically) but it didnt talk very well of the industry.

I've gone from being very enthusiastic about the possible career change to slightly worried!

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You have a right to be worried! its gonna be long hours with poor pay for a pain in the ass job.
Your life will turn into work, sleep and eat.

but you will get your VM staff package =)

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Definitely having second thoughts now.

Im currently working a 7-3pm office job. The pay is poor, I only bring home £1000 a month, but at least the pay is consistent. Im on a very tight budget and really cant earn a penny less than that. It wouldnt be so bad if I was on my own but Ive got a family to think about as well.

Im almost hoping now that I dont get offered the job so that I dont have to make the decision!

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I guess a job is a job and some of the guys I worked with loved the job but they were the ones doing 12h days nearly every day. You can earn over your current wage but you will be doing a minimum of 10h days.

This is what I was on £17/18K = 5/6day week (inc. forced overtime), minimum 50h week and with a six day week you could be looking at maybe a 70h+ week.

tbh this is almost a last resort job, looks interesting from the outside but once you have been there a while it will wear you down with the hours and quite often the stress of the job.

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Thanks again.

McNicholas have told me it will be a 45 hour week, Tues - Sat. If I hit their targets I will be earning £20,000.

I guess that what they tell me and what the actually reality of it will be are probably quite different.

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im sorry but i dont think that will be the case after a while of being there.

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Yeah right, i would love to see those targets.

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I took home around £24,000 last year and its around £20,000 this year (Was off for a long time with sickness). My day starts around 7:30/8am, average finish about 4:30pm. Ive nothing to hide so if you want to know more, feel free to PM me.

Ive not worked for McNicholas but I will be as of April so I will know more then as we get moved across.

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Cheers, JayJay.

PM sent!

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hi. i went for the kellys interview on thursday (3rd) and he told me that i will be paye. i will also get a diesel card, mobile phone and van, 28 days holiday and my salary will be £24,000pa. on average i will have to do 4 installs a day, 5 days a week. sounds gravy to me . any 1 know what to expect from the weeks training i have to do? i know im gona have to learn to climb a telegraph pole judging by the 2 poles they had stuck in the middle of there depot lol. im also leaving a job i have been at for 6 years. to be honest i had enough of being self employed. plus i hate paying for fuel which is a killer when i had to travel alot. i been working for a company called bailey teswaine in the city (london) and to be honest, i hate london

Cheers

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Brett, if you think that Kellys will pay you 24k for 4 installs a day over 5 days you can safely assume that on average you will only be able to complete 2 in a day.
Then as you cannot complete 4 there will be penalties to pay.

Kellys will never pay out that kind of money without working you to the ground. I would love to see what these BT installs are all about.
I am assuming they will be working on the infinity rollout which is fibre to the cab. So my guess is that it will be long cable pulls and tons on travel.

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but they said i will get a deisel card? they also said i will be working around my sorrounding areas. and it is doing property installs. really am having seconds thoughts. they did say i would be working on behalf of BT and virgin.

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Sorry, i just clarified.
They are indeed doing residential installs. But i still do not see how they will pay that money for 4 installs a day. It will probably be full installs involving new cabling to property via poles and cabs. They can take a while to complete.
Do your own research on them before taking the plunge.

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Didnt Kellys pull out of the virgin contract and ran over to the BT contract? I very much doubt you will be touching Virgin fella. Kelly's kinda **** on Virgin from what I can make out.

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judging by these posts i wont b doing anything lol. he said in the interview i will be working on behalf of virgin and bt. i really dont no wot to do. i aint heard anything good about kellys on this site lol

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hi all, ive just seen a field tech job in nottingham that i may apply for, i have a cabling back ground for the civil service(9 years) so how much better is it to work for VM than contractors, if any ?

any advice would be welcome

thx

Re: Contractors
 

If you can get a job with VM then great! Go for it.

However be wary of the contractors, its not so good.
At the moment it is clear that there is a big shake up going on regarding who has these install contracts so it may be wise to wait a few months if going down this road.

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Im sorry but 24K for 4 jobs per day over 5 days, it just aint gonna happen dude.

---------- Post added at 20:43 ---------- Previous post was at 20:34 ----------

on the vm contract 24K is about 9 jobs per day over 5/6/7 days

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thx for the reply, seems a bit odd that VM are looking for field techs when contractors do all the installs, unless this shake up means VM will do more instals i guess

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VM need field techs to do service work mainly although they do installations occasionally too.

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which contractor got west yorkshire and when?

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Hasnt been announced yet

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thanks

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ive just had a call from a lady from VM about the job i applied for, she mentioned some technical questions, but i was looking after my daughter and cooking at the time so she said to call her back tommorow, which i will, 1 question tho, is this going to be an interview on the phone ? as ive never done this before :confused:

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These are questions about what you do before, upon and after arriving at the job, i.e. tlephone before arrival, show company id badge put on over shoes

That sort of thing

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thx for the reply, will see how it goes tommorow

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i work for flexicomms in yorkshire , does any1 knw the potential contractor to virgin in the next few month!? Have heard a few rumors but nothing concrete

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All rumours Stacky, nothing confirmed at the moment.

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When will the new contacts be anounced, Ive heard that they begin on the 4.4.2011.
What about transition periods with engineers for new contracts tooling vans ect.

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The Avonline Bristol guys done the van and tools ect last week!

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were do u work from? Thats what i do new builds and networks. Would be good to find who has it wee ste. As you know what ths games like m8 , if u leave it until last min theyl just get guys that dont know wat ther doing and leave the guys who do in the job centres , or going back on resi,s. No disrispect to you res,i guys but it 1nce was good money until mapp showed up and kept it in ther pockets rather than passing it down to the real hard workers. !

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The only thing the contractor does here for network is pull the cables we put all the ends on and commision the amps .And we do our own copper jointing aswell .We use fibre tek for fibre .Our main contractor here is Map but for how long who knows the have sent crews to help out in Brighton .Does anyone know who got the cab clean contract ?

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Im based in Bellshill stacky, I mainly cover the North East and North West franchises. We have Fujitsu in the North East who do all civils and cable work whereas NMC cover the north west and Flexicomms do some of the cable work subcontarcted by NMC.

We wont hear any changes to contractors until later this year now, plenty rumours flying around but I wouldn't like to speculate

;)

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ye we get al our work of nmc m8, but i know they hav also invested alot in to new vans and a hell of alot of cable equipment. Wil just hav to wait and see m8 cheers. Geting through to belshil is a nitemare lol many times getin hold of people proves hard . Think we deal with c watson.

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MAP for the cab cleans

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hi all,, i work in stoke with kelly communications but as you all know contracts are to be renewed in april ,, and the main runners for stoke apart from kellys are fujitsu and mc nicholas,, but was wondering what their pay structures are like ,, at tthe minute i am on a 2 man crew ,and my pay is


single pull - £25
dual pull - £32
triple pull - £42
repull - £18
and then the add outlets, exts, re cables and such things are £7
doin an average of 5-6 jobs a day

am i goin to be worse off, same or better

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ey up daz, its what u make it mate, imean everytime a contractor comes in the rate of pay lowers. Wel thats in my experiance any way. Ive worked for endless contractors m8 and the pay never gets beter unless you do more. I wish the good old rates would come back for us al, but thats like asking your boss if you can finish early . Never happens

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Daz, I just seen the mcnichs prices, looks very much same as your on now.

Sounds like were getting rid of transits for one man crews and getting VW Caddys.... I look forward to the erm, lost space!

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I do hope Kelly's are finished!!

Scumbag company run by idiots!

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i do wish money would go back to how it used to be , but in stoke we do finish pretty early really , normally between 2 and 3 myself, and the bosses are very good with us and try to keep us all happy in regards to days off and if we need to be done early, (obviously not always possible, but sometimes they can be arsey)
just got us all thinking now on wether to stay and take the risk of lower pay or to go for the BT work,, a couple of our lads have already started it , so i can confirm that it is definately £24,000a year working monday to friday with 4 jobs a day, includes van, diesel card all tools are free including cordless drills , and backberry phone, work gets emailed to them 1 at a time( when 1 job is closed ,they email the next one to ya) but if they finish early they have to help other lads that are struggling, they work until 5 oclock

---------- Post added at 18:39 ---------- Previous post was at 18:38 ----------

ye, they do nothing for us just take take take , which i know most companies do anyway , but they really take the p**s

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When mcnics took over from cobra in liverpool they never offered us a new contract as cobras was near identical in price. When MAP came in the 1st thing they tried was to get us on there stupid contract making out it was a good thing there are lads on cobra and map contracts in liverpool and the cobra lads earn at least 800 a month extra. Mcnics were a brilliant company to work for imo if you work hard you got paid very well wages were always right and relised that it was the installers that make them the cash.

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Good to hear something positive about McNics, alot of engineers worried about what will happen. Thanks for signing up redone! :)

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Well said JayJay. I hear plenty of positives about McNic's myself, good to hear from the horses mouth though.

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I'm working nights for Openreach doing LLU work. Contract went from £11.50 and hour to £9.20 when contract was restarted last Feb. Does anyone know the contact details for the BT contract mentioned in the earleir posts? and who or if has the contract for stb collections in the North home counties (beds,herts bucks). Quite happy what i'm doing but like to keep my contacts upto date!!;)

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I would love them back here but it looks like map are here to stay in the north west if rumours are to be belived. Mcnics are very h&s concious we had proper health and saftey reps not just sign this or you dont get your work like map. Also the top managment are/were really approuchable and down to earth and would often agree with the techs ahead of tms and site managers especially on h&s things. There top h&s fella was great and had the managers worried every time he was around but i found him friendly enough

---------- Post added at 22:47 ---------- Previous post was at 22:43 ----------

Just go to the kellys website and apply loads from north west have left to go and all say is alot better as its quality not quantity they want. as for box pick ups is that not the contractors who collect them as an sro

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It was kellys who had the contract a few years ago but i heard they lost it to someone else. Any ideas?

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Is this defintley confirmed. at the moment we recieve £15,000 for 4 jobs a day and work tuesday to saturday. any idea on what single man crews are going to be getting??

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hi all my names chris/ex bt/install/jointer,any lads from north east/newcastle have any
contact num,used to work for ntl and vm 2yrs ago and trying to get back in trade,all my
contacts gone,thanx fellas

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[QUOTE=dazj10;35194605]i do wish money would go back to how it used to be , but in stoke we do finish pretty early really , normally between 2 and 3 myself, and the bosses are very good with us and try to keep us all happy in regards to days off and if we need to be done early, (obviously not always possible, but sometimes they can be arsey)
just got us all thinking now on wether to stay and take the risk of lower pay or to go for the BT work,, a couple of our lads have already started it , so i can confirm that it is definately £24,000a year working monday to friday with 4 jobs a day, includes van, diesel card all tools are free including cordless drills , and backberry phone, work gets emailed to them 1 at a time( when 1 job is closed ,they email the next one to ya) but if they finish early they have to help other lads that are struggling, they work until 5 oclock[COLOR="Silver"]

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any 1 heard owt new bout contracts yet for yorkshire for networks

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New contracts for the Yorkshire region will not be anounced now until June:mad:

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sooner the better pal. Wage has gone rite down for me

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How much have you lost if you dont mind me asking?

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its the work m8 thats dried up , as a 2 man crew before the new year we use to get at least 8 hundred each a fortnite takehome sometimes more but now its lucky if we get 5 hundred. Al our network jobs are only small alatley but seem to take twice aslong. Maybe al the decent work is been held back.

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Any news about Birmingham contract? Been loads of rumblings about fujitsu but nothing definite.

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I thought Avonline got Birmingham from whats been said on here?

We go over to McNics Saturday.... anyone know what vans were getting? Weve been told VW Caddys but going from a Transit to a Caddy will be a nightmare unless its a Caddy Maxi ?

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either way lads who ever gets it , wil be interesting to see how long theyl last for.

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Does anyone have any contact details for Fujitsu

Cheers

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there is a link from f tel s web site , but no contact details as yet on ther. Fire the number my way if any1 knws

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Best of luck to who ever gets bimingham worst network i have ever worked on.
As for the fujitsu contrct i have heard from a teeside lad that they are not being offered there contract as the map 1 saves them £

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hi does anyone know who paid kelly communications wages in year 06/07.i keep getting fines for not doing my end of year tax.would be gateful for any help

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i think it was moya, wel thats wat i got forcd to go on. But i think there wer a couple but we didnt get offerd them in leeds. Hope that helps mucker. Oh i think they changed ther name if i remeber rightly bt not sure wat 2

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Heres a tip....Ask Kelly Communications!

As stated, it was Moya.....who no longer exist. The people behind that set up went under and since have been banged up for fraud.

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Would be good to know who does the construction in SW London, anyone know?

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some 1 must know by now whos in line for the yorkshire area?

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any news yet ?

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some 1 must know something for yorkshire area?

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Hot off the press Fujitsu have won the Yorkshire and Midlands area contract leaving MAP with nothing.
Not sure about the start dates

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4th of July is 1 date we have heared :)

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Source?

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Does not matter who the source is, it is now common knowledge

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Of course it matters.
We all know that its likely that Fujitsu are taking over very soon, anyone can post that. What i would like to know is what makes your comment more factual that any other speculation previously posted?

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Have to agree with you. Lets see the source :LOL:

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One of the MAP managers let it slip and hey presto its all over the sites .

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Dam. :(

We use map for business and there good in our area.

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They still will be, it's more than likely it will be the same guys just working under a different company name, same **** just a different name above the door