Centrum Pile – Centrum Staff complete 25 years of service

From left to right: Mervyn Walsh, Eamonn Walsh, Paul Moran

This month, we would like to congratulate Paul Moran, Eamonn Walsh, and Mervyn Walsh on achieving 25 years of service with Centrum Pile. We caught up with them to have a chat about their accomplishment and what it has been like working at Centrum.

Paul Moran was the first employee to join the Centrum piling factory as a crane operator in 1993. He remembered his first day clearly, which happened to be Independence Day, winning a £5 bet on the tennis player Pete Sampras. He started his career at West Pile and was convinced to move to Aarsleff by Eamonn’s brother Jim. (Centrum Pile was under the Aarsleff name until 2001)

Eamonn joined Aarsleff shortly after Paul, hand tying and building cages. Eamonn was a good hand at DIY and was approached by his brother Jim to fix Paul’s bike. The day after, Paul was cycling to work and tried changing gears only to go head over the handle bars and fracture his elbow. When Paul returned to work after his accident, he saw Mervyn wearing his overalls – but fortunately for Paul he still had a job.

Mervyn joined his twin brother Eamonn hand tying the steel cages. The two of them produced 50m of steel cage per hour, up until 1996 when the first welding robot was introduced enabling the factory to produce up to 100m/per hour. This caused a lot of worry in the factory as it was thought that the welding robots would mean job losses – but fortunately this wasn’t the case. Mervyn and Eamonn changed job roles from cage builders to robot maintenance technicians, which Mervyn still is today.

They all agreed there had been a variety of changes since they joined back in 1993, both in the technological advancements, and how the factory runs. When they started, the factory produced only 300m/per week and had 1 crane that could only lift a single pile at a time. Today the factory produces more than 26,000m/per week and utilises 12 cranes.

Paul said his favourite part of the job is the people that he works with and the open culture, where everyone is happy and comfortable talking about their concerns and issues. Mervyn and Eamonn both agreed, saying that they also enjoyed working in a good team and experienced great job satisfaction at the end of each working day.

Today, Paul continues to operate cranes in the factory, unloading and offloading precast piles, and Mervyn maintains and operates the welding robots, alongside his son Luke. Eamonn progressed up from production manager to factory manager in 2016, and currently makes sure all operations of the factory run smoothly.

Please join us in congratulating Paul, Eamonn and Mervyn for their continued commitment to Centrum Pile. Congratulations on reaching 25 years of service!