Kiernan Steel’s commitment to occupational health, safety and wellbeing was recognised at this year’s All-Ireland Occupational Safety Awards.
The All-Ireland Occupational Safety Awards offers companies the chance to showcase the health and safety performance of their business. Winning a NISO/NISG Award demonstrates the positive and proactive culture of safety management that exists within a business.
Kiernan Steel was the recipient of a ‘Higher Distinction’ at the 2021 Awards which were held at the Great Southern Killarney on November 4th last and the Longford company’s HES Leads, Kieran Whelan and Gary Connell, are quite rightly proud of the high H&S standards that the company has set.
“It is great recognition for the company,” Kieran agreed in conversation with Building Ireland. “The challenge for us now, as a company, is to continue to improve. As the saying goes, you are only as good are your last project or your last day, so we are always striving for further improvements and will continue to push forward with all the organisations we work in conjunction with to raise the bar and ensure our standards get higher and higher.”
Located in a rural area a few kilometres outside Longford Town, Kiernan Steel started life in 1989, when husband and wife team, Frank and Dolores Kiernan, opened a modest manufacturing business, producing agricultural buildings for the farming community of Longford and surrounding counties.
Today, Kiernan Steel is one of Ireland’s leading steel manufacturing companies, with state-of-the art manufacturing facilities in a modern 18,000 m2. facility with an adjoining large storage yard, expanding year on year.
From day one, the Kiernan family have been much respected employers in the area. A secure job at Kiernan’s Steel has been a much-cherished ambition, for generations of locals. The company now employs over 200 people in their Irish and UK operations, and mutual respect and loyalty between management and staff, has been a cornerstone of the success in their business.
While their main clients have traditionally been in Ireland, their ever-expanding portfolio of UK and Western European customers, have been attracted by the wide range of quality products and services the company provides to the steel construction industry. Kiernan Steel specialise in providing value engineering for design and building projects.
The work undertaken by Kiernan Steel, is as varied as their customer base. From major projects for the pharmaceutical, Data Centre, food processing, warehousing and agricultural industries, to railway bridges, temporary projects with basement construction propping steels and stands for major sports stadia.
Clients range from the smallest local authority to the largest blue-chip international organisation – the common link is the Kiernan Steel logo, so proudly applied to every job, as a sign of quality craftsmanship.
The company can undertake a full construction, from foundations to a weathered building, and many other services and products, including structural engineering design, steel detailing, steel fabrication, fire intumescent painting, erection, cladding and roofing and floor metal decking.
Also undertaken at their Longford plant, is SIN beam manufacturing and post fabrication shot blasting using the largest shot blaster of its kind in any Irish steel fabrication plant.
Their much-coveted industry standards, including Steel Fabrication to Execution Class 4 for CE marking to EN 1090 for Factory Production Control, ISO 3834 for welding quality management, and ISO 9001 quality management systems, are further evidence of the Kiernan Steel commitment to quality at all levels within their organisation.
Through their trade partners, additional services include, site surveying and ground clearance, concrete works including foundations and ground slabs, cladding and roofing and precast concrete installation.
The progressive company has a Health & Safety policy and is accredited to OHSAS 45001 for Health and Safety management. The management’s main aim is that each person in the factory and on site make it home safely every evening after work
H&S is therefore one of the main aspects considered in designing and detailing projects to ensure that they can be safely fabricated, transported to site and erected without causing harm to any person.
Each project receives its individual site method statement and risk assessment by the company’s site safety officers and all Kiernan Steel personnel receive the relevant training to ensure they can complete their work safely and to a high standard.
“We have up on 120 employees here in the factory and then you are talking about another 70 to 80 dotted around the different sites,” Gary Connell revealed. “We are on sites in Cork and Tipperary at the moment as well as in Dublin of course.
“Kieran and I are the Senior Leads but we also have five Safety Officers in the organisation and our work is overseen by management and project managers. Our main Contracts Manager, Michael Murphy, for example, would be very much into pushing mental health and Health & Safety on all of our sites. He is very much into promoting what the company is trying to achieve from that point of view.”
Kieran added: “We are very fortunate to have that buy-in from senior management. There’s no point in me or Gary or somebody else on the ground saying ‘this would be great’. You need the senior management and the senior personnel in the company behind it and more so than just saying ‘that’s a good idea’ or ‘that would look good’. You need them at the helm basically organising the whole thing and getting it set up and leading and pushing it forward.”
What does a typical working day/week/month look like from Kieran and Gary’s perspective? “Your typical day starts with a morning whiteboard to see what the staff is going to be doing on a specific day,” Kieran answered.
“Having a discussion about what tasks the crews will be doing and making sure that the lads are talking for themselves, telling us what they are doing rather than us telling them what they should be doing. It’s a three-way conversation between safety, crew and supervision.
“Then you’ll be going around doing audits on equipment, lifting equipment is a major one for example, making sure that there is no damage or anything like that. All slings etc are inspected and then you have a visual monthly inspection as well.
“You also have your weekly toolbox talks with the crews, making sure they know what is ahead of them in terms of upcoming works and that people know there is safety in the task they are doing and where they are working. We go through plenty of diligence before moving to the next site or who they are going to be working with.”
This year’s NISO/NISG Awards rewarded the dedication of those involved in occupational safety through highly challenging times.
“In the last year or so, because of Covid and other things, there has been a greater focus on the health side of things, particularly mental health,” Gary revealed. “On some of our sites now we have mental health ambassadors, mental health first aiders. We have guys trained up, basically just talking with guys to make sure that they have peace of mind at work.”
Kieran continued: “That’s something that would have been in the pipeline but the onset of Covid accelerated it. Covid affected people differently and it took some people out of their comfort zones. Where people would have been used to going and watching sports, that was taken away from them as an outlet. The same with going out with friends at the weekend.
“People became more secluded because of Covid so we wanted employees to have points of contact they could talk to if they were feeling under pressure in any way. We branched it out so anyone could become a mental health ambassador and then it was just a matter of getting the message out throughout the company so that people knew who the points of contact were.
“And, if a person didn’t feel comfortable talking to anyone within the company, they could go to Abate counselling. It was important there was outside help as well to make it as freely available as possible to be able to talk to someone.”
Behind every successful business is a safe and secure working environment. For over 30 years, from a small local business to a multi-million internationally recognised industry leader, Frank and Dolores Kiernan, along with their loyal staff and their family, are still at the helm in running and developing their successful enterprise.
They are very proud Longford people; they are very proud Irish people and they are very proud of their staff and their combined achievements in the continued success story that is Kiernan Steel.
Kiernan Steel
Carrigglas
Co Longford
N39 VN23
Phone: +353 (043) 33 41445
Fax: +353 (043) 3345904
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.kssl.ie
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, March 2022, Vol 8 No 3
