Cleveland Bridge’s £100m jobs joy

Jul 25 2008 by Paul Gannon, Evening Gazette

A DARLINGTON construction firm is on a mission to recruit 300 new staff in 12 months after winning two contracts with a combined value of £100m.

Cleveland Bridge has scooped a £50m order to carry out steelwork and metal decking on the iconic Shard of Glass - London’s new super-tall skyscraper.

It has also won a contract to supply up to 20,000 tonnes of steel for the extension of the M74 around south-east Glasgow.

The work will enable Cleveland Bridge to boost turnover from £45m to £70m this year and create other jobs across Teesside’s engineering supply chain.

Managing director Brian Rogan hailed the deals as a triumph of his skilled workforce and was “confident” of securing contracts of a similar scale before the end of the year.

He said: “We are currently bidding for a number of major national and international contracts.

“We’re in with as good a chance as anyone else on most of them - and a better chance than most on one or two of them.”

He believes a continuation of the current economic slump - which has created a toxic mix of falling orders and spiraling raw material costs for UK manufacturers - would not prove a barrier to winning further work.

He said: “Generally steelwork firms have been doing OK, although most manufacturers have been affected by the rising cost of materials.

“However, if steel prices go up, everyone in the industry is in the same boat so it doesn’t make competing for work any harder.”

The company employs around 600 staff from its Darlington manufacturing base and is looking to recruit factory and site workers as well as staff for managerial roles.

Specialising in the design and construction of major bridges and landmark structures, it has worked on iconic buildings including the Humber Bridge in East Yorkshire and Australia’s famous Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Current projects include work on two state-of-the-art drilling rigs at the Haverton Hill shipyard - said to be the biggest non-military fabrication project in the country.

Commissioned by SeaDragon Offshore, the rigs will be used to drill for gas and oil at depths of up to 10,000 ft in locations such as the Gulf of Mexico.

Cleveland Bridge is also working on the fabrication and erection of Stockton’s newest bridge.

The £15m footbridge, linking Teesdale and North Shore, is currently taking shape. The new structure will be illuminated at night and is expected to carry 4,000 people across the river each day when it is completed at the end the year.

Cleveland Bridge has also been involved in the major construction project to replace the A66 Surtees Bridge.

Founded in 1877 as the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company, the firm has become an internationally renowned bridge building and structural engineering specialist, working on landmark projects in all five continents.

In 1969 it was bought by Trafalgar House - a UK conglomerate with interests in shipping, property, construction and engineering - before merging with Dorman Long Group to become Cleveland Structural Engineering in 1990.

Six years later it was re-named Kvaerner Cleveland Bridge after the takeover of Trafalgar House by Kvaerner ASA. In 2000 it regained its independent status as Cleveland Bridge.