Galvanizing talk at UKCW

UK Construction Week is almost upon us. If you’re going, be sure to attend the talk by Iqbal Johal and Sean Weston on hot dip galvanizing for healthier buildings.

UK Contruction Week starts on 8 October 2019 and takes place at the NEC in Birmingham. Joseph Ash Galvanizing will be there as exhibitors and we have also sponsored a speaking slot in the ‘Surface and Materials’ Hall on Wednesday 9 October. During the talk – titled ‘Galvanizing for low carbon, healthy buildings in a circular economy’ – Iqbal Johal from the Galvanizers Associationand Sean Weston from WR-AP Architects will talk about how steel is essential to the technologies and solutions that meet society’s everyday needs, and how the combination of hot dip galvanizing and steel has an almost unique partnership in delivering sustainable design choices.

It’s set to be a very interesting talk, so book your seat if you’d like to attend!

Find out more information about the talk here.

If you’ve not already registered for entrance to the whole UKCW exhibition, you can do it here. And the best bit? It’s FREE!

Invitation to the Galvanizers Association Plant Open Days

Save the date for Tuesday 15 October 2019, when we’ll be hosting some Open Days at our Joseph Ash Galvanizing and Premier Galvanizing plants.

In conjunction with the Galvanizers Association we will be opening our doors to the public, to enable you to see how our plants operate.

Would you like to attend? If so, book a tour today.

This is what you’ll see:

Watch how steel is dipped into zinc in the galvanizing baths to protect it from rust and corrosion
Meet our team members and ask any questions you have about hot dip galvanizing, shot blasting, powder coating and steel protection.
Our technical teams will also be on hand to offer advice about designing steel for galvanizing.

The plants taking part include:

Joseph Ash Bilston
Joseph Ash Chesterfield
Joseph Ash Medway
Premier Galvanizing Corby
Premier Galvanizing Hull

Please get in touch if you’d like more information.

The Structural Steel Design Awards is an annual event for people and companies involved in the constructional steel industry.

Sponsored this year by the British Constructional Steelwork Association and Trimble Solutions (UK) Ltd, the awards celebrate the UK excellence of the steel construction industry, with particular reference to cost effectiveness, aesthetics, efficiency, innovation and sustainability.

To be considered for an award, companies had to submit their entries by February 2019. Since that time, the entries have been reviewed by a panel of judges, and a shortlist of potential winners has been announced.

The shortlisted entries are as follows:

160 Old Street, London
Aga Khan Centre, London
Battersea Arts Centre
Chiswick Park Footbridge
Coal Drops Yard, London
Ely Southern Bypass
Fenchurch Court, London
G W Annenberg Performing Arts Centre
Greatham Creek Seal Hide, Middlesborough
Ingenuity House, Birmingham
Kettner’s Townhouse and Soho House Greek Street
Neuron Pod, London
Project Mint at the O2
River Thames Footbridge, Taplow
Royal Academy of Music, London
Telford Central Footbridges
The Macallan Distillery
Tombola HG, Sunderland
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, New Stadium
Wimbledon No.1 Court

For more information about the projects, click here.

The awards this year will take place at an evening reception in London on 1 October and team members from Joseph Ash Galvanizing will be there to congratulate the winners and runner-ups.

We’re looking forward to it already!

Matt Green and Myles Durward from Joseph Ash nominated for In-Comm Training and Business Services Awards

On 7 June 2019 the annual In-Comm Training and Business Services Awards were held at the ICC in Birmingham. The Awards celebrate and reward young apprentices and adult learners across the West Midlands, and this year team members from Joseph Ash Chesterfield were there to celebrate their training achievements.

Matt Green and Myles Durward have both been completing JAC Level 2 of In-Comm’s BIT training. As part of this course they are learning new skills to take back to Joseph Ash Chesterfield. Skills include looking at ways to be more efficient (and remove wastage) in the following plant processes: Overproduction, Transportation, Waiting, Inventory, Defects, Motion and Process.

Myles and Matt were both nominated for the ‘Learner of the Year: Continuous Improvement’ award, and on the night, Matt walked away with a ‘Highly Commended’ accolade.

Six other team members from Joseph Ash Galvanizing have also completed their Level 2 training, and alongside Matt and Myles, will be moving onto Level 3. A new team from Joseph Ash will also start Level 2. (Back row left to right: James Crookes, Matthew Phillips, Dean Holland, Matt Green. Front row left to right: Mark Payne, Myles Durward, Dave Foster (In-comm trainer), Wayne Smith)

Congratulations to all our team members endeavouring to learn new skills, improve our plants and further their careers. The commitment to learning is great! A special congratulations to Matt and Myles too.

Thanks for such a great event In-Comm!

Last Friday we attended the annual Galvanizers Association Awards – more affectionately known as The GAGAs. It was a great event, held at the Royal Aeronautical Association HQ in London.

The GAGAs are a chance for fabricators, constructors, engineers, architects and artists to showcase a project they have worked on in involving galvanizing. They do this by submitting an entry into one of the following categories:

Galvanizing in Architecture
Galvanizing in Engineering
Galvanizing in Detail
Sustainability Award
Duplex Awards.

The Galvanizing Association received many amazing entries and it was great to attend the awards and see the details of each shortlisted project.

It was also a special year for the Galvanizers Association as they celebrated their 25th year of hosting the awards.

The winners of the 2019 awards are as follows:

The Rising Path in Cambridge by the chadwick dryer clarke studio who won the Galvanizing in Architecture Award
Conservation of Catrine Weir by Addison Conservation + Design who won the Galvanizing in Engineering Award
Palas Cinema in Galway, by dePaor who won the Galvanizing in Detail Award
Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre by Brightblue Studio who won the Sustainability Award
Nine Elms Thames Path Pavilion by Studio Weave who won the Duplex Award.

A few extra awards/commendations were also given out:

Jailmake received a Special Mention for their RHS Rootbench which featured at the 2017 Chelsea Flower Show
Stephen Taylor Architects were Highly Commended for the Cadix Housing project in Antwerp
The Eden Project by Grimshaw Architects also won the highly prestigious ’25 Years Winners’ Winner Award’.

Further information about each of the winners plus the projects is available here.

If you are interested in entering the 2020 GAGAs, click here.

Thank you to the Galvanizers Association for another wonderful event!

‘BE, Well’ at Clerkenwell Design Week

We recently spent four days at Clerkenwell Design Week, showcasing the aesthetic beauty and sustainable benefits of galvanized steel, with the ‘BE, Well’ installation in St. John’s Square. The 9 x 3 x 4m pavilion shaped structure was built as part of a collaborative project between partners Haines Watts (who sponsored the project), WR-AP Architecture, John Cullen Lighting, Lionweld Kennedy, Berry Systems, and Joseph Ash Galvanizing. The event was a great success, with many people stopping by to interact with the installation and leave their ‘thought of the day’ in the well. In a week forecast for rain, we were also amazingly lucky with the weather. The sun shone all week, the steel glistened, and visitors to the event were able to enjoy all the Clerkenwell designs, inside and out, at their very best.

As we’ve now come to the close of such an amazing project, we thought we’d share some of the thoughts behind the installation from Sean Weston and Max Rengifo at WRAP Architecture, the architects leading the project.

Why were you attracted to the project?

As an emerging architecture practice, we were excited to participate in Clerkenwell Design Week – such a renowned international design festival – and be given free reign on the design content by our sponsoring partners Haines Watts. Also, many of the installations at Clerkenwell Design Week in previous years had focused on the craftsmanship synonymous with the area. With our design we felt it was an interesting opportunity to focus on a more finite aspect of design and to work with one specific material – galvanised steel – to showcase its potential to the design world and to allow an alternative type of craftsmanship to be featured.

Can you describe the installation and its defining features?

The ‘BE, Well’ pavilion is an investigation into the design potential of galvanised steel. In an age where sustainability is on the agenda of all design disciplines ‘BE, Well’ showcased the whole life longevity and potential beauty embodied in the galvanising process. The pavilion took visitors on a journey from utilitarian building products through to bespoke architectural elements, all showcasing the detailed beauty of galvanising.

As Clerkenwell Design Week was celebrating its 10^th anniversary, the pavilion featured a galvanised steel well as its centerpiece. We felt this was important as it would remind visitors that Clerkenwell originally had a well (hence the name!). The well within our installation acted as a place where visitors were asked to comment on the design industry, or simply leave their ‘thought for the day’.

What were your biggest challenges during the project?

The biggest challenge we wanted to overcome was to ensure that a material – galvanised steel – that is usually used in either a utilitarian or industrial manner could be showcased with finesse and elegant detailing to promote its innate aesthetic properties. We believe we achieved this with the ‘BE, Well’ installation.

What is the meaning behind the pavilion’s name ‘BE, Well’?

The ‘BE, Well’ name represented all the good things that the pavilion characterised: the protection and long-life expectancy that galvanising provides to steel; and a new physical well for Clerkenwell to attract positive thoughts about the design industry, Clerkenwell Design Week, or simply good ‘thoughts for the day’.

__________________________

Partnership roles

Haines Watts London, a top UK accounting firm, is sponsored the project. With decades long experience of working with some of the UK’s most prestigious architecture firms, they wanted to share their support for the architecture industry by sponsoring an up-and-coming young architecture practice to design the installation.

They chose WR-AP Architecture as the designers, a young London-based practice set up by Sean Weston and Max Rengifo in 2018, which specialises in creating beautiful buildings with delightful, memorable and enjoyable experiences for their clients and the environment.

As the installation was made from steel, Joseph Ash Galvanizing protected the metal using a batch hot dip galvanizing process from one of our plants.

Joseph Ash Galvanizing is part of Hill & Smith Holdings PLC. Two other companies within the Hill & Smith group – Berry Systems and Lionweld Kennedy – also made up the partnership. Berry Systems fabricated the steel, and Lionweld Kennedy fabricated the mesh grating.

The final company in the collaboration was John Cullen Lighting, the award-winning lighting specialist, who enhanced the installation with a variety of stunning lighting techniques.

Railtex 2019 – the UK’s premier exhibition of railway equipment, systems and services sectors – starts tomorrow at The NEC in Birmingham. Joseph Ash Galvanizing will be there, exhibiting on stand C10.

As a proud supplier to the railway industry we’ll be at the event to showcase our abilities in hot dip galvanizing steel for the UK’s railways: everything from gantries to station canopies, car parks, bridges, fencing, lineside cabinets, cantilevers, and CCTV posts.

We’re all set up and raring to go when the doors open tomorrow. If you’re attending, please drop by and say hello!

If you work in the railway industry and you’d like to attend the event, visit the Railtex website for more information.

On Friday 26 April, The Lily-Mae Foundation hosted their annual Golf Day, to raise funds to support families affected by stillbirth or neonatal death. Joseph Ash Galvanizing and Premier Galvanizing hosted guests at the event.

Thank you to the companies who joined us on the golf course:

A great day was had by all, and collectively we helped the charity to raise over £25,000. Wow!

Joseph Ash Galvanizing to exhibit at UKCW for the fourth year running!

In October 2019 UK Construction Week will take place at the NEC, in Birmingham, and Joseph Ash Galvanizing will be exhibiting as part of the ‘Surface & Materials Show’. We’ve been attending the show every year since 2016, and we’re very pleased to be taking part again.

UK Construction Week is the largest construction trade event in the UK, which unites over 650 exhibitors with an audience of over 35,000 trade visitors.

The entire exhibition is made up of nine separate shows, all under the same roof:

Build Show
Energy
HVAC
Civils Expo
Plant & Machinery Live
Smart Buildings
Timber Expo
Surface & Materials Show
Grand Designs Live (from 9-10 October)

Visitors can enjoy an expert line-up of over 300 speakers, as well 150 hours of CPD content.

Joseph Ash will be exhibiting at the Surface & Materials Show. This setting will showcase the latest surface and material solutions for architects, interior designers, developers and industry professionals looking for cutting edge innovations within the materials sector. It will also provide the most powerful opportunity available for suppliers and contractors to connect face-to-face, under one roof, in just three days.

UK Construction Week will be held from 8-10 October 2019. Its location in Birmingham will provide a central meeting point for the UK construction industry. And the best bit? It’s FREE to attend.

Joseph Ash Galvanizing and Premier Galvanizing: Supporting the Lily Mae Foundation at their annual charity event

On Friday 26 April 2019 Joseph Ash Galvanizing will host up to 62 people (including 50 clients) at a charity golf day at The Belfry set up by the Lily Mae F oundati on – an organisation created to support parents and families affected by stillbirth or neonatal death.

Joseph Ash Galvanizing has purchased tickets for rounds of golf, seats at the evening dinner, and is sponsoring a hole at the event.

We have been supporting the event for the last ten years and in total – alongside our clients – we’ve helped to raise over £120,000 for the charity. (Which makes us proud!)

Funds are raised through ticket sales, sponsorships and generous donations from attendees.

We’re very much looking forward to the 2019 event!

To see photos of previous events visit the Joseph Ash Galvanizing Flickr profile.

To find out more about the work of the Lily Mae Foundation, click here.