The Bendy bus
Recently the school decided that they needed more covered space to enable the students to leave the school building during break times. The canteen area is simply a bit crowded for all of the students in the school to spend all of their break in there and there isn’t many other places on the school grounds where the kids can escape to during break, away from the obvious educational surroundings and under cover, away from the weather.
Obviously the powers that be looked at a simple covered structure, which wouldn’t end up being much more than a frame with a roof on it, but the cost associated with creating such a structure ran into the almost £100k!!! I couldn’t believe that myself, and it did sound a little crazy. Someone’s making some good cash somewhere.
They came up with the idea to buy one of Boris’ bendy London buses. Now I know that almost sounds crazier than paying 100K for a roof. There is very good reasoning behind this idea though. The buses, which were obviously a hazard to other road users, have been taken off the road and let’s face it, what else can you do with a bus like that? Maybe it’ll work in America where the roads are wider, but they probably already have a contractor and shipping something that big across the pond would probably negate the recycling value about ten times. The buses were thus being scrapped and with the engines taken out, being sold off for £4000 a pop. Mad when you think what they probably cost to build.
Anyhow, the school decided to buy one of these buses and had it delivered to site. The bus was extensively cleaned inside and out and a bit of serious engineering applied to it. It was important to keep the quirky things about the bus, so the interior was kept the same. An electricity supply was converted to work with the bus’ requirements and a compressor was plumbed in to feed only the pneumatic door opening system. The electric supply ensures that the lights and CCTV in the bus works, as well as the air conditioning that was added.
The result is that the kids now have a pretty cool and spacious place to hang out during break times. It’s a quirky environment that demonstrates some out-of-the box thinking from the school and thus encourages this in the students. I have no idea what the final bill was for the bus as it is now, but I can guarantee that it was less than a 10th of the price of the roof structure that was considered in the first place.
If you want to pop in to see our bendy bus or any of our other facilities that are open for letting, please contact me on 07966785829.