ENGINEERING
BRIGHT
SPARKS Cabling colleagues reflect on successful five-year journey
PICTURES: CHRIS BOOTH WORDS: DAVE ROBSON
Cable colleagues – National Jointing Services’ leadership team( from left) Chris Maycroft, Sean Curtis, Ben Swales and Neil Young.
Five years ago, National Jointing Services was little more than a spark of an idea that came together in talks at the kitchen table.
When brothers-in-law Ben Swales and Sean Curtis decided to start their own cabling firm, they were tapping into years of experience.
Ben had worked with cables for 20 years“ but was sick of working for other people” and Sean was working on electrical maintenance at the Lackenby beam mill.
A phone call in July 2020, offering Ben work on a project in Tottenham, was the catalyst – and prompted that chat around the kitchen table.
The result? Exciting plans to start their own cabling company – and it proved a masterstroke.
Five years on, Middlesbrough-based National Jointing Services has four fulltime employees, 26 workers on its books, an annual turnover just shy of £ 1.5m and a string of successful projects, with more in the pipeline.
But as Ben, 44, and Sean, 32, look back on a whirlwind five years, they agree it’ s the result of a lot of hard work, a leap of faith, a bank of valuable contacts to tap into – and that kitchen table decision.
Ben recalls:“ The phone call about the Tottenham job came on my birthday, July 16, as we were driving back in the van from a job – I remember I got a speeding ticket!
“ We got home to Billingham, sat at the kitchen table and started planning what to do.
“ We had one laptop between the pair of us, a printer and a book with an endless amount of notes in, but we decided to set the firm up there and then.”
Even as they drove back to Billingham, the lads were discussing logo and name ideas.
Sean said:“ We chose National Jointing Services for the name to reflect where we wanted to get to.
“ A lot of people just put initials down as a company name, but we wanted to sound big straight away, even if we started small. And now we’ re not just national but international.”
Fifteen days later, on July 31, 2020, National Jointing Services was born – and they haven’ t looked back since.
Initial work was largely in the south, including that Tottenham job for two apartment blocks.
As word spread of their reliability and high standards, other jobs came in, including contracts in Mayfair, Wentworth Golf Club and at GCHQ in Bude, Cornwall.
There’ ve also been contracts for data centres in Slough, the bet365 building in Stoke and the training area at the Wimbledon tennis complex.
But Ben – who, as a freelance, had already spent time working away in Denmark and Germany – was, and remains, keen to get more work in the North-East.
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