JT Tie©: The Bespoke Scaffold Tie

Published: Mar 27 2020

The Idea

John Taylor, PHD’s Contract Manager, developed a bespoke scaffold tie to resolve most of the common issues reported with typical scaffolding ties. After months of development, the JT Tie© was born.

I had been thinking about this scaffold tie over the course of a few months. I was constantly being asked to move ties by other trades on our sites and I thought, surely there’s got to be a better way to do this. – John Taylor

CONCEPTS

There are three main concepts to the JT Tie’s design; reduce the amount of materials used, decrease the chance of removal/tampering, and eliminate the cutting of tubes, increasing the sustainability of materials.

The JT Tie’s neat and tidy look has been constructed in a way to have less components and fixings on show, with no open-end tube and only three caps placed in non-general working areas, lessening the risk of injury to operatives working. This will also mean less manual handling and components to fix, saving time and labour costs.

The ties will be sprayed in a distinct red/orange colour and correctly labelled, decreasing the chance of accidental knocks or bumps.

CONCEPT TO REALITY

Once in place, the tie is less likely to be tampered with, or removed by others, as the design allows you to wind-back the screw end to the building work, to come through with just the rod to work around.

Additionally, the design reduces pulled muscles and strains if scaffold needs pushing off the building, the JT Tie provides a jacking system, which assists the scaffolder to jack the scaffold to the correct measurement of the wall.

One of the biggest advantages the JT Tie offers is that is can be reused, compared to traditional ties. Eliminating the cutting of tubes and ties minimises wastage by throwing out unused materials, simultaneously extra fittings used as check fittings can be used elsewhere as the welded washer on the JT Tie acts as a check on either side of the double coupler. Removing the cutting of tubes also decreases the long-term effects from a safety perspective, reducing injury to the body like ‘white finger syndrome’.

PATENTED JT TIE

The JT Tie went from concept, through to our in-house design and engineering team, and undertook vigorous testing through the external company TESMEC Ltd.

In October 2019, our patent was registered, and we have successfully rolled out three sizes of the JT Tie across most of our sites, including Barratt’s Hounslow Quarter, L&Q’s South Grove, Lendlease’s Elephant Park and Shuttleworth Road on a new Layher set up.

APPRECIATION

As a big thank-you, we presented John Taylor with a scaled JT Tie gold trophy. On the experience, he said,

I’m overwhelmed with the amount of support I received from PHD in making the JT Tie a reality. They listened to me, assisted in the creation, and now it’s a real thing which we use every day on our sites. It’s been a great feeling to be supported in my ideas.

It has been reported he is now working on his next big idea, watch this space…