THE DEBRIEF – THE EDITOR’S TAKE ON THE BRACE YOURSELF PODCAST
Every scaffolder has asked the question at some point: how do you get off the tools?
I got off them by accident, into trade news and publishing, which I don’t recommend as a repeatable route. The latest episode of The Brace Yourself Podcast is about doing it properly. Simon Boyes and Ben Beaumont are joined by Lee Buckley, who runs scaffold design firm Buckley Design Solutions in Manchester, and Tony Nicolaisen, Technical Authority at Altrad in Denmark. Both started on the tools. Both now work in design. And they got there by very different routes.
Lee’s route: college by day, spanners the rest of the week
Lee started as a yard operative in 1996, worked on the tools and ran sites. He enjoyed it and earned good money. He only realised design was possible when an old boss made the move first.
Getting there was hard graft. For the first year he trained one day a week, unpaid, with a designer. He paid his own way through college one day a week. The other three days he was on the tools, picking up all the weekend overtime he could to cover the money he was losing.
In year two he went into design full time. Once he knew it was for him, there was no half measure. The spanners went in the wheelie bin.
Tony’s route: teach yourself, then prove it
Tony came through the Danish apprenticeship and worked onshore and offshore. He loved the tools. What bothered him were the drawings coming from engineers who had clearly never built a scaffold. He looked at them and thought: I can do better than that.
So he taught himself. He read the scaffold standards for pleasure, the way his wife reads novels. He watched engineering channels on YouTube until the formulas made sense.
Then came the day a job offshore was stopped because someone said the scaffold couldn’t take a four-tonne load. Tony said it could, and did the calculations to prove it. They told him he wasn’t an engineer. So the calculations went to an engineer to check. The answer came back: your numbers are fine.
Because he holds no engineering licence, his designs are still checked and stamped by a qualified engineer. But the knowledge is his own.
The money question, answered honestly
Most people assume getting off the tools means a pay cut, and for most people it does. Lee covered his with overtime.
Tony never took one. Denmark had no scaffold designers who actually knew scaffolding, so when Altrad needed one, he could name his price. “I want to earn more money,” he told them. “But if you can find somebody else, do it. I will be your guest.” They paid.
For me, that’s the most useful lesson in the episode. Whether you take a pay cut depends on whether you are asking for a chance or filling a gap nobody else can fill. Tony filled a gap. But he spent years teaching himself before that conversation ever happened.
The fear is the real barrier
Both men are honest about being scared, and neither was scared of the scaffolding.
Lee was expelled from school in his final year and left with no qualifications. “Going back to the textbooks was terrifying for me,” he says. “The thought of going back to school just made me nervous every day.”
He had also never used a computer. When college assignments had to be handed in on a disk, he didn’t know how to put his work on one. So he handed in a blank disk. Every assignment. For two years. Nobody at the college ever checked.
Tony wasn’t afraid of the studying. He was afraid of the computer. “Getting AutoCAD handed over, it almost took me a month before I could draw a single line.”
Plenty gets said about the barriers to getting off the tools, and most of it is about qualifications and money. Listen to these two and the real barrier is simpler: the fear of looking daft. Both of them felt it. Both did it anyway.
Why time on the tools makes a better designer
Lee’s advice for designers who have never scaffolded is the best line of the episode: “Ask how the scaffolders want to do the job, and then shut up and listen.”
Everyone he trained spent time on the tools. Not to become scaffolders, but to understand the job. “If you don’t know how hard it is to try and top out a twenty-one foot tube next to your shoulder, then only then will you stop putting joints in standards just in the top of the lift.”
Tony describes what happens when someone in nice shoes turns up on site: the scaffolders see another office worker coming to tell them how to do a job they’ve done for twenty years. Arrive knowing the trade and speaking the language, and the respect comes on its own.
His own role shows where that can lead. A Technical Authority is an independent quality check on a project, with the power to stop a job if the standards aren’t right. In Tony’s words, even if it is the project manager or the CEO.
Mentors, and leaving the right way
Lee’s route into running his own business wasn’t gentle. Working under an established designer, he was never paid a salary. The deal was thirty per cent of what they made. “If we make nothing, you’ll get thirty percent of nothing.” The weeks ran to sixty and seventy hours.
Then he was told it wasn’t working out and he needed to set up on his own. Kicked out of the nest, as he puts it. Sink or swim.
Here’s the part worth copying: his mentor kept mentoring him. For years afterwards, the two checked each other’s designs. The man who pushed him out stayed in his corner.
The lesson is plain. This industry is small. The person you leave may end up checking your work, sending you work, or buying from you. Leave properly.
The safety net is the tools
Both men give the same answer to anyone who’s scared to try: the worst that can happen is you go back to something you’re already good at.
“You put your belt back on, you go back out,” Lee says.
His test for anyone who’s undecided: will you be sat on a beam in the middle of Manchester, soaking wet, wondering why you didn’t take the chance?
Tony answers with a sentence his late father used to repeat to him, and it’s the line of the episode: “You never, ever should sit in a chair and be seventy years old and tell yourself, why didn’t I do that?”
The episode also includes Tony’s preview of next summer’s Scaff Fest, the three-day festival he is helping to organise: system and tube-and-fitting competitions side by side, design-and-build challenges, live demos, exhibitions, camping and a family-friendly setup. Built by scaffolders, for scaffolders. Details at scafffest.com.
The latest episode of The Brace Yourself Podcast is available through the Brace Yourself channels on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. ScaffMag is the show’s Official Media Partner.
