There was good news for Co. Longford recently when Kiernan Structural Steel Ltd (KSSL) announced that it’s to create 50 new jobs as part of a €3.5 million expansion of its Carrigglas facility. The jobs in manufacturing, installation, quantity surveying and draughtsmanship will bring to 150 the total number employed by the family-owned structural steel manufacturer.
Starting from humble beginnings manufacturing agricultural sheds in 1989, Kiernan Structural Steel Ltd has grown into one of Ireland’s leading structural steel firms. The announcement of the new jobs was made at the official opening of the company’s new state-of-the-art extension which was performed by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Mary Mitchell O’Connor on May 27th last.
This new investment is in response to increased demand from clients for the facility to apply high-quality fire proofing intumescent paints, particularly for multi-national clients.
Welcoming the announcement, Minister Mitchell O’Connor said: “I am delighted that Kiernan Structural Steel, a highly-innovative Irish company which is expanding rapidly in export markets, is creating 50 jobs. The growth of this family-owned business based in Longford for the last 27 years is great news for the Midlands region.”
KSSL managing director Frank Kiernan noted how the 43,000 sq. ft. expansion would increase the company’s production capacity.
“Kiernan Steel was founded on being a solution provider for technically challenging structural steel projects for the Irish and British steel construction industries with an eye for further market expansion. This new extension gives us the opportunity to increase our annual production capacity and has led to the securing of some very large projects in Ireland and the UK,” he says.
The expansion of the Carrigglas facility brings the total factory area to almost 125,000 sq. ft. The extension includes 30,000 sq. ft. of a new paintshop which is required to meet the growing need for off-site applied fire intumescent painting. As part of the new paintshop, KSSL has added a one-of-a-kind in Ireland 3m x 1.8m post fabrication Kaltenbach shot blaster which cleans the surfaces of steel members prior to the application of paint. KSSL also added 13,000 sq. ft. to the engineering workshop and a new high-speed steel plate cutting and drilling line.
These new facilities have placed the Longford Company at the top of its market and are in high demand by some of Ireland and the UK’s most prestigious clients. In addition, KSSL has opened an office and fabrication facility in London (Perivale) in the past two years to cater for its growing UK client-base.
KSSL was established by husband-and-wife Frank and Dolores Kiernan, who are now joined in the business by their sons Frank Jnr and John, and daughter Claire. When they both lost their jobs in 1989, Frank and Dolores considered emigrating to the UK or America in search of work but, with four children under the age of eight, they felt that leaving Ireland wasn’t an option.
Instead, they set up Kiernan Structural Steel and the rest, as they say, is history.
“Things were very bad at the time,” Frank remembers.
“I had been working in the steel erection business since 1972 and Dolores in accounting and book-keeping. We had just built a new house and the kids were very young at the time. We were left with two choices – emigrate or make the business work. Thankfully, we managed to make the business work, but it didn’t happen overnight.
“Working out of a two-bay hayshed at the rear of our house, we started making small sheds for local farmers. We progressed from there into industrial units,” adds the Killoe man, who served his time initially as an apprentice welder with Steel Fabricators in Longford town before going on to work all over Ireland as a foreman with Dublin company JMSE.
Nowadays, KSSL provides a wide range of services to the steel construction industry, including projects where clients request value engineering for their structural steelwork. Among the services offered are: design engineering, steel fabrication, steel erection, cladding and roof metal decking, floor metal decking and welded shear studding, castellated beams and steel trusses manufacture, fire protection painting. The firm constantly strives to meet client expectations on project programme and on budget without affecting quality, health & safety or the environment.
KSSL has worked on projects for many blue chip companies, including tech giants Google and Intel, pharmaceutical firms Elan, Abbott, Baxter, Merck Sharpe and Dohme, food companies Kerry, Glanbia and Diageo, and retail brands such as Dunnes Stores, Tesco, Lidl, Musgraves, Aldi and Pallas Foods. Irish Rail and Irish Cement are also good customers.
During the recession, KSSL’s turnover fell from €13 million in 2007 to €3.5 million in 2010. This forced the Kiernan’s to look beyond the Irish market for the first time and with the help of Irish builders and developers based in London, they were able to break into the UK market and thus turn their fortunes around.
“We had to broaden our horizons when the recession hit in order to survive,” explains John Kiernan, who is a structural engineer by profession.
“The UK is a big market for us now. We’ve done projects in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Preston and Scotland. We’ve also worked in Hannover in Germany with Sisk Builders on a project for Primark.”
KSSL has been involved in numerous high-profile projects here in Ireland, including Elan pharmaceuticals in Athlone, Co. Roscommon, the Guinness Brewhouse at St. James’s Gate in Dublin, Intel in Leixlip, Co. Kildare, Irish Cement in Duleek, Co. Meath, Pallas Foods in North Dublin, Kerry Foods in Naas, Co. Kildare, Google and Bristol-Myers-Squibb (both Dublin). Examples of the company’s work can also be found in sports stadia such as the Oval Cricket Ground in London, Elvery’s MacHale Park in Castlebar, Dublin’s Parnell and Dalymount Parks and O’Connor Park in Tullamore.
Quality assurance on every project is of utmost importance in all of KSSL’s operations. From tender enquiry through design, fabrication and erection, a quality system design to ensure complete satisfaction for the client is employed. KSSL is accredited to ISO 9001 for quality management and has a certified Factory Production Control (FPC) to Execution Class 4 to EN 1090 and welding Quality Management System (WQMS) which enables the company to CE mark all its products.
KSSL is also a registered BCSA company and is on the RQSC (Register of Qualified Steelworker Contractors Scheme) which provides extra confidence to clients and consultants alike. It was the first Irish company to obtain NHSS 20 certification which is the execution of steelwork in the UK National Highways Sector Scheme.
In 2013, the Kiernan family set up a separate company, Green Rock Ltd, which is the Irish agent for RAPID EPS edge protection systems for concrete structures, steel structures, timber frame structures, trenching systems and trailer systems. Green Rock is the English translation for Carrigglas.
Kiernan Structural Steel Ltd
Carrigglas,
Longford,
Co. Longford.
Telephone: +353 (0)43 33 41445
Fax: +353 (0)43 33 45904
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.kssl.ie
Taken from Building Ireland Magazine, July 2016, Vol 2 No 3
