Have you seen the new Google Plus? If you visit Google, you won’t miss the big arrow pointing to the new tool bar.

I tried it today and uploaded a bunch of photographs from our asbestos surveying tour in Kenya.

They don’t show all we did, but it will give you an idea of what we did when we weren’t working.

Click here to view the Google album and feel free to add a comment or two.

After a punishing work schedule of asbestos surveying in Kenya, our five-man team returned to the UK this weekend a full week earlier than scheduled.

Although not the most profitable of contracts, it has certainly been the most enjoyable, both in terms of the work, the people we met and the stuff we did in between work.

This included several safaris of the kind that tourists never see (due to having our own 4×4 we could go places that the tourist buses can’t), white water rafting, bungee jumping (yes, I did), camping, close encounters with monkeys and crocodiles and a load of things that I’ve probably forgotten.

On our last day in Kenya, we were invited to take part in a football match by the client. Three of the team did – Bob, my business partner and myself declined and watched from the sidelines.

Given that two of our sons were playing, it took us right back to the days when we started this little venture eight or nine years ago, when a chance discussion about what each of us did for a living, whilst watching our kids play football set us on our course.

Back then, they were only 13 years old. Now they are grown men and working with us, having the time of their lives. It was like time had stood still watching them on Friday, quite surreal.

You can take a lot our of being your own boss, but it’s not always about money. I have been extremely privileged to take my son on a real life adventure and experience something with him that I would never have dreamed possible. Both Bob and I have been on the most fantastic team-building and bonding exercise we could ever have imagined. My only regret is that the rest of the family couldn’t come along as well.

Pictures coming soon.

Confidentiality means I can’t identify the client, but let’s just say it’s as big as it gets in the contract world and following an initial click and some nifty tendering, we’ve just bveen awarded a nice little contract to conduct 200+ asbestos surveys in Kenya.

The job will involve a lot of travelling around and whilst travelling to such far flung places might seem exotic, the workload will extremely heavy, with little, if any downtime during our visit in September.

This follows the success of another contract which completed last year, when we conducted more than 300 surveys on behalf of one of the Maltese government departments, though that one didn’t have the tight timescale deadlines of the Kenya job.

In a contract of this nature, the logistics of getting the personnel where they need to be is one of the hardest tasks, especially when you don’t know the area.

We’ll be travelling far and wide during our trip, but we have a local driver supplied and all accommodation, flights etc are covered by client directly.

Leaving home for prolonged periods though is the hardest part of this type of contract, but UK based work isn’t what it was a few years ago, in common with many other industries and professions. We’re lucky that we have an established company with plenty of visitors seeking advice and assistance, because it’s these daily enquiries that keep us going in the hard times. In short, I go where the work is – and if it means a little time away, then so be it.

Today, we’re off to glorious Gloucester – not quite as exotic, but just as fruitful.