Taylor's Engineering services ltd

Nice little job for Arminhall Engineering Ltd recently. We carried out this steel installation within a lift shaft to enable site to cut the slab out to extend the core.

The steel was installed over 3 phases to allow for the outer concrete cores to be poured and set prior to moving on to the next phase.

Even if the heat's been doing its best to slow everyone down, we got there. Have a good weekend. ☀️

China flooded the global steel market last year. 131 million tonnes of cheap steel and every firm in UK construction is feeling it whether they realise it or not.

Most people in construction know steel prices have been all over the place lately and this is why.

China's construction market has slowed right down but instead of cutting back production, the mills have kept running non step and started exporting the excess instead.

Last year they sent out 131 million tonnes. This was nearly double what it was three years ago. It hits global markets at subsidised prices that British producers just can't match.

The knock on effect here is that every major economy has had to introduce tariffs to protect what's left of their domestic steel industries. The US did it years ago, the EU has its own measures and the UK's new tariffs land on 1 July.

For anyone running construction projects right now it means prices are hard to nail down and supply chains that are less reliable than they used to be. You quote a job, steel prices shift, and suddenly the numbers just don't work anymore. It's a global problem but it's hitting UK sites every week.

How is it affecting your projects at the moment? Has it hit your pricing yet or are you yet to feel it?

Sources: OECD Steel Outlook 2026 — June 2026 Euronews — Global steel crisis deepens, June 2026 OECD Steel Committee — March 2026 session

Fabrication errors happen. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't been on enough jobs.

Steel comes out wrong, the holes are in the wrong place, sections aren't cut to tolerance. It happens and it's part of the reality of this industry.

You can't always predict it and you certainly can't always prevent it. What you can do is decide how you handle it and solve the issue.

There are two types of people on site when something's not right. There are some who spend the next hour pointing fingers, documenting why it's not their problem, sending emails and on the phone. Then there are the ones who look at what's in front of them, work out if there's a solution and get on with it.
I know which type gets called back.

The complaint doesn't fix the steel. The solution does.

What's the worst fabrication issue you've had to work around on site and how did you solve it?

It's going to be a scorcher over the next couple of days.
You either love it or you hate it and working outside there's definitely no hiding from it.

Either way, make the most of it because this is England and you know as well as I do it won't last. Next week we'll probably all be back in waterproofs wondering where the summer went.

Stay cool out there. ☀️

While 281 construction firms collapsed last month, a 250-year-old British steel company just started putting up the UK's largest forge. Some really positive news for the industry.

Sheffield Forgemasters has been making steel since 1776. Two and a half centuries on the same site in Sheffield, through wars, recessions and every rough patch this country has seen.

This month they have started putting up the UK's largest forging facility. A building that will stand 45 metres tall, built to produce the kind of large-scale steel components that Britain's defence and nuclear programmes can't get from anywhere else.

There's £1.3 billion invested, funded by the Ministry of Defence, and its already taking shape.

While the rest of this week's headlines are full of firms going under (and there are plenty of them) there's a 250-year-old British steel company quietly building something bigger than anything this country has seen before.
People in this industry should know all about it.

It's not a quick fix for everything that's wrong right now. The pressure on margins, the late payments, the firms folding, that's all still very real.

Sometimes though, it's worth looking at what's actually going up, not just what's coming down.

British steel. Still here. Still building.

What projects or investments are giving you confidence in the industry right now?

Every person on this team has a different story of how they got here. The work is what brings it all together.

British, Romanian, Latvian, Bulgarian, Spanish. Where you're from doesn't really matter in this trade. What you can do definitely does.

Some of these lads have been in the trade longer than others have been alive. Some are still finding their feet and fresh into it. What they've all got in common is they showed up, they graft and are willing to learn and adapt.

Steel er****on attracts people from all over. Different backgrounds, different routes into the trade, different languages on site. The work doesn't care where you're from though. It cares whether you can do it to the best standard in the safest way possible.

The teams that work well together are the ones where experience passes down regardless of where anyone started. That only happens when people are given the chance to prove themselves and get stuck in.

Proud of these boys.

What does your team look like and where did your best people come from?

This week the team has been installing balustrade panels to precast balcony units ready for delivery to site.

Getting this done off site means the units arrive ready for install.

No waiting around, no risk of working at height on leading edges and the HAVS are minimised due to the studs being precast into the slabs.

Nice straightforward job to see the boys into the weekend.

Every cable has a breaking point. So do you.

Construction is one of the most stressful trades you can work in. 94% of construction workers reported stress in the past year. 83% reported anxiety. Most of them just got on with it regardless.

The industry rewards that mentality. Head down, keep moving, don't mention it. For a long time I was the same.

What changed wasn't the workload, that doesn't go away. What changed was how I managed around it. Getting off site at a reasonable time when the job allows. Not checking the phone at 10pm. Making sure there's something in the week that has nothing to do with work. Small things, but they add up.

Stress in this trade is real and it's not going anywhere. The jobs are demanding, the margins are tight, fabrication comes out wrong, programmes slip. You can either let it build up unchecked or get deliberate about how you decompress.

Nobody performs better when they're running on empty. Not on site, not in business.

What do you do to manage the pressure? Has anything actually worked for you?

Not every job is a 10-tonne beam.

This one was a bit different for us.

This nice aluminium cat ladder was dropped into a tight space with next to no working room. The lightweight materials made all the difference.

The weight made a genuine impact as the manual handling was minimised. No crane, no heavy lifting plan. Just a manageable install in a space that didn't give you much to work with.

This is the kind of job that reminds you that if you can read a site and adapt, the material almost doesn't matter.

Does your steel contractor utilise different materials on their jobs?

When a main contractor goes under, the press covers the headline. Nobody covers the subbies left waiting to get paid.

Ardmore Construction Group entered administration last week, with major London sites shut down following missed payments to staff and subcontractors.

Around ten projects across the capital were left in limbo, including hotel developments in Mayfair and Kensington and a life sciences campus at King's Cross.

The group had been under pressure from liabilities linked to historic building safety defects and reported a £42.6m pre-tax loss on revenue of £343.8m in its latest accounts.

That's the headline but further down the supply chain, it's a different story.

Subbies and specialists who were on those sites last week are now waiting to find out what they're owed and whether they'll see it.

Nearly 3,900 construction firms became insolvent in the twelve months to March 2026 — still well above pre-pandemic levels. The industry keeps moving, but the risk keeps landing on the same people.

When a contractor above you goes under, what's your experience of actually recovering what you're owed?

Sources: Construction Enquirer | PBC Today | Construction News | Credit Protection Association (CPA)