Hi,
I suspect that when you posed this question many months ago your reference to, '....in England', should really have said, '.....in the UK' .
Anyway, assuming that this is correct, I hope that I can give you some of the early info on the subject.
Back in the late 70's and early 80's, I worked for various scaffolding contractors carrying out maintenance and shut down work in Aberthaw Power Station, Barry in South Wales.
The firms included Stephens & Carter and Cape and I think ISL at one point.
Whilst I was with Cape ( but possibly it was S&C), we had a Safety Supervisor called Jim Dymond trying hard to keep us all in safety order.
At some point he said that he wanted to keep track of all the scaffolds on the plant and started numbering them on a sheet of paper and inserting that sheet into a small plastic bag which was then attached to the scaffold by string. He would circulate the plant and after inspecting the individual scaffolds, would note that he had done so on the sheet and reinsert it into the bag with notes in his notebook about any safety work that needed doing on them which he then reported to the company works office.
We used to laugh at him and often swapped the bags between scaffolds to confuse him, but to be fair to him he persevered.
A year or two after leaving Aberthaw for the last time, I heard that Jim had gone into business with another guy and formed Scafftag, the offices for which were eventually on Barry dockside.
I looked up Jim in around 1993/4 as I wanted some advice on studying for a NEBOSH qualification and wondered which one to go for.
He very kindly advised me and later allowed me to accompany him on an inspection of part of the Dow Corning complex in Barry as part of completing the NEBOSH GENERAL CERTIFICATE course that I had eventually chosen.
Sadly at that time his wife was suffering with terminal cancer and was on the point of ending her days in the Marie Curie Hospice in Penarth. He had not been able to concentrate on the Scafftag business for many months and told me that his partner had made him a very poor offer to buy his half of the business and he didn't have the strength to fight it and had accepted. After that the business expanded tremendously in the following years and went international.
I lost touch with Jim after that and I doubt that he is still with us but that's the story of Scafftag's early years and I hope it is of interest.
