Stonemason

Creating buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone from the earth. These materials have been used to construct many of the long-lasting, ancient monuments, artifacts, cathedrals, and cities in a wide variety of cultures.
Igneous stones
Granite is one of the hardest stones, and requires such different techniques to sedimentary stones that it is virtually a separate trade. With great persistence, simple mouldings can and have been carved into granite.
Generally, however, it is used for purposes that require its strength and durability, such as kerbstones, countertops, flooring, and breakwaters.
Igneous stone ranges from very soft rocks such as pumice and scoria to somewhat harder rocks such as tuff and hard rocks such as obsidian, granite and basalt.

Metamorphic
Marble has traditionally been used for carving statues, and for facing many Byzantine and Renaissance Italian buildings. The traditional home of the marble industry is the area around Carrara in Italy, from where a bright white marble is extracted in vast quantities.
Slate is a popular choice of stone for memorials and inscriptions, as its fine grain and hardness means it leaves details very sharp. Meanwhile, its tendency to split into thin plates has made it a popular roofing.

Sedimentary
Many of the world's most famous buildings have been built of sedimentary stone. There are two main types of sedimentary stone used in masonry work, limestones and sandstones. Examples of limestones include Bath and Portland stone.

Security specialist

Globalisation has changed the structure and pace of corporate life; the saturation of traditional markets is taking companies to more risky places; the shift towards a knowledge economy is eroding the importance of ‘place’ in the business world; new business practices such asoffshoring challenge companies to manage at a distance; and new forms of accountability, such as corporate governance and corporate social responsibility, put added pressure on companies to match their words with deeds, wherever they are operating.

At the same time, security risks have become more complex, too. Many of the threats, such as terrorism, organised crime and information security, are asymmetric and networked, making them more difficult to manage.

The principle role of the security department is to convince colleagues across the business to deliver security through their everyday actions and decisions – not try to do security to or for the company.

The security department is in the business of change management rather than enforcement and works through trusted social networks of influence.

Security is there to help the company to take risks rather than prevent them and should therefore be at the forefront of new business development.

Security constantly responds to new business concerns and, as such, the portfolio of responsibilities and their relative importance will change over time. Security departments should never stand still or become fixed entities. In many companies today, its role is more concerned with overall corporate resilience than ‘traditional’ security.

Security is both a strategic and operational activity, and departments must distinguish between these two layers.

The power and legitimacy of the security department does not come from its expert knowledge, but from its business acumen, people skills, management ability and communication expertise.

Plasterer

A Plasterer is a tradesman who works with plaster, such as forming a layer of plaster on an interior wall or plaster decorative moldings on ceilings or walls.

Plaster is used as a building material similar to mortar or cement. Like those materials plaster starts as a dry powder that is mixed with water to form a paste which liberates heat and then hardens. Unlike mortar and cement, plaster remains quite soft after drying, and can be easily manipulated with metal tools or even sandpaper. These characteristics make plaster suitable for a finishing, rather than a load-bearing material.

Plaster was a common building material for wall surfaces in a process known as lath and plaster, whereby a series of wooden strips on a studwork frame was covered with a semi-dry plaster that hardened into a surface. The plaster used in most lath and plaster construction was mainly lime plaster, with a cure time of about a month.

Today this building method has been partly replaced withdrywall, also composed mostly of gypsum plaster. In both these methods a primary advantage of the material is that it is resistant to a fire within a room and so can assist in reducing or eliminating structural damage or destruction provided the fire is promptly extinguished.

Plaster may also be used to create complex detailing for use in room interiors. These may be geometric (simulating wood or stone) or naturalistic (simulating leaves, vines, and flowers) These are also often used to simulate wood or stone detailing found in more substantial buildings.

Repointing

With exposure to wind, rain, frost etc, the mortar holding bricks (or stone) together on an external wall will often start to crumble away and fall out.

On older properties, the pointing will actually be a harder mortar than the bonding mortar, so once this is dislodged, the softer bonding mortar will become exposed and wear away quite quickly.

This repointing process begins by removing damaged pointing to a depth equal to or slightly more than the with of the joint, or to the point where sound mortar is reached.

On very old buildings with soft materials, such as under-fired brick, removal by hand is often the most effective to avoid damage.

Hard Portland cement mortar is usually removed with a grinder or power circular masonry blade, taking care not to damage the masonry units. Vertical joints in most cases are always done by hand or with small power chisels.

Poor repointing work often raises the level of the mortar joint above the face of the masonry unit, which causes the mortar edge to feather.

Repointing materials

It is essential that the mortar used for repointing have similar performance characteristics to the original mortar used in a building.

Mortar used for re-pointing should normally be based on hydraulic lime and clean sharp sand or other appropriate aggregates. The colour and size of the sand particles determine the appearance of the mortar.

The existing older mortar should be carefully examined so that aggregates used in re-pointing can be selected to match existing mortar for texture and colour.

The strength of the mortar should reflect the strength of the stone or brickwork and the exposure to weathering.

Sandstone requires a weak mix while whinstone will allow a firmer mortar bed but not so hard as to cause cracking and capillary pathways for water. Exposed chimneys will need a more durable mortar than a sheltered area of walling.

Lime is a general term for calcium-containing inorganicmaterials, in which carbonates,oxides and hydrohides predominate.

Materials are still used in large quantities as building and engineering materials (including limestone products, concentrete and mortar) and as chemical feedstocks, among other uses.

The rocks and minerals from which these materials are derived, typically limestone or chalk, are composed primarily of calcium carbonate. They may be cut, crushed or pulverized and chemically altered.

Brickwork

Brickwork masonry is produced when a bricklayer uses bricks and mortar to build up structures such as walls, bridges and chimneys. Brickwork is also used to finish openings such as doors or windows in buildings made of other materials. Where the bricks are to remain fully visible, as opposed to being covered up by plaster or stucco, this is known as face-work.

Flemish bond, also known as Dutch bond, has historically always been considered the most decorative bond, and for this reason was used extensively for dwellings until the adoption of the cavity wall. It is created by alternately laying headers and stretchers in a single course.

The next course is laid so that a header lies in the middle of the stretcher in the course below. Again, this bond is one brick thick. It is quite difficult to lay Flemish bond properly, since for best effect all the perpendiculars (vertical mortar joints) need to be vertically aligned.

If only one face of a Flemish bond wall is exposed, one third of the bricks are not visible, and hence may be of low visual quality.

This is a better ratio than for English bond, Flemish bond's main rival for load-bearing walls. Stretcher bold

Flemish bond, with two stretchers between the headers in each row, and the headers centred over the join between the two stretchers in the row below.

Rat-trap bond, also known as Chinese bond, is a type of garden wall bond in which the stretchers and headers are laid on their sides, with the base of the stretcher facing outwards. The main advantage of this bond is economy in use of bricks, giving a wall of one brick thickness with fewer bricks than a solid bond.

Rat-trap bond was in common usage in England for building houses of fewer than 3 stories up to the turn of the 20th century and is today still used in India as an economical bond, as well for the insulation properties offered by the air cavity. Also, many brick walls surrounding kitchen gardens were designed with cavities so hot air could circulate in the winter.

Herringbone bond

A brickwork bond in which the exposed brickwork is bonded to the heart of the wall by concealed courses of bricks laid diagonally to the faces of the wall in a herringbone pattern, with the end of each brick butting against the side of the adjoining brick; a form of raking bond.

Basket pattern bond

A pattern made up of pairs of bricks placed in a square grid so that the join between each pair is perpendicular to the join of the four pairs around it.

English Bond

The English bond bricks were laid in alternate layers of headers and stretchers. while flemish bond has alternate headers and stretchers within a layer, giving good looks to the surface. english bond has high strength value while flemish bond has looks.