Robert Merry is an independent stone consultant and project manager who ran his own company for 17 years. He also acts as an expert witness. Here he presents his view of the stone industry this month.

I am lucky enough to be a member of the Natural Stone Industry Training Group, who develop and implement nationally recognised qualifications for people who work in stone. There is a suite of training programmes from stone fixers to the new NVQ L3 in Construction Contracting Operations, which is running as a pilot programme starting this November. It is a must for all your managers.

My colleague from these very pages, Mark Priestman, has been writing eloquently about this and other training subjects for some time now and once you’ve read this, I would strongly recommend you flick over to his column. But not until the end of mine!

We all now know the curve is upward and we will need more qualified staff pretty soon, if not immediately. Couple this with the tightening of the health & safety legislation through CSCS cards and the need to be compliant trained and able will only increase as ‘recovery’ bites. It seems odd to describe an economic recovery in negative terms, but managing success can be as painful as managing decline.

What became evident from the recent meeting of the training group was the ‘broken’ connection between education and apprenticeships. Secondary education establishments, it seems, want to hang on to their 16-year-olds to take them through A levels. All good, but there is a modicum of cynicism when educational funding depends on bums on seats – fewer bums on seats, less educational funding. There is some reluctance by schools to engage in promoting apprenticeships as a real alternative for pupils who do not want to ‘do’ A levels.

Lambert Walker Conservation and Restoration Ltd from ‘up north’ (no, even further than Finchley), have spent time and energy with their local secondary, junior and primary schools and local colleges promoting the industry with great success, finding several apprentices for their business. They exposed local school children to stone in all its glory – mucky, dirty, dusty, heavy, but ultimately cool and hard (a bit like me, really). And they were surprised at the interest the pupils showed. So were the teachers.

By contrast, at the other end of a career, my Saturday broadsheet of choice had a full page obituary to a man called Kenneth Wybert Hawley, who had died aged 87.

I’ve never heard of him before but it turns out he was a tool collector and historian who amassed more than 70,000 tools from the Sheffield tool-making industry, as well as other tools from Britain and around the World. After being stored in his shed (‘large shed’ it said in the article; very large, I imagine) it is now on permanent exhibition and is recognised as one of the pre-eminent places in the world to learn about tools and toolmaking.

He started as a tool seller and ended up running his own specialist tool shop in Sheffield from 1959. The sign in the shop window read ‘We sell nowt but tools’ to set it apart from just a plain old hardware store.

Ken Hawley was awarded the MBE in 1998 in recognition of his work to preserve the 17th century Wortly Top Forge, near Sheffield, and his collection of tools was officially recognised as a museum in 2002.

Although I haven’t visited the museum, I looked it up on the internet and noticed it has an exhibition of hammers. It seems slightly ridiculous to get excited about it, I know, and my family has warned me about any attempt to organise a family day out to see it – there has been talk of restraining orders.

But it fascinates me, all this history and tradition. The extraordinariness of a museum dedicated to toolmaking and tools. It’s so British; so us. And important. So important that Kenneth Wybert Hawley has a whole page dedicated to his life and work in a national newspaper.

So maybe this is part of what is so attractive to all those kids who Lambert Walker connected with at local schools and why we should be out there shouting about this industry and its history and our heritage.

Modern, traditional, historical and occasionally hysterical – hammer exhibitions! But still cool. Cool as stone.

Robert Merry, MCIOB, ran his own stone company for 17 years and is now an independent Stone Consultant and Project Manager. He is also an expert witness in disputes regarding stone and stone contracts. Tel: 0207 502 6353 / 07771 99762.