Celebrating 20 years in business, North-West Mechanical Services Ltd (NWMS) in Derry has proven itself as a national mechanical services contractor which has built a solid reputation for providing a sterling service for its clients.
Founded in 1999 by lifelong friends Gerry Campbell and Gary Hegarty, who are plumbing and heating engineers by profession, NWMS has gone from strength to strength and today operates as a medium-sized multi-disciplined sub-contractor with a labour force of 60 and a turnover of circa £4 million. The company is capable of undertaking single projects ranging from £50,000 to £2 million in value.
NWMS continues to grow at a steady rate, strengthening existing relationships with existing customers and building further relations with new clients. The company’s employees have undoubtedly been its most valuable asset with training and substantial investment key to ensuring it has the right people for the job. NWMS’s dedicated and diverse team of talented professionals bring a wealth of experience and a youthful drive to succeed, to every project. While primarily a sub-contractor, NWMS also undertakes projects as principal contractor, coordinating other trades and taking responsibility for EHS and complying with CDM regulations.
NWMS provides process piping, coded welding, orbital welding and high purity stainless piping, heating and cooling systems, domestic pipework and plant installations, planning preventative maintenance, gas line services, insulation, mild steel fabrication and recruitment to industry sectors such as chemical processing and wafer manufacture, semi-conductor, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, commercial and industrial, public sector, healthcare, education, hospitality and retail, and ecclesiastical.
The company’s highly-skilled team of coded welders, plumbers, pipefitters, metal fabricators and administration staff, who are based at its new 11,000 sq ft office and manufacturing facility on the Buncrana Road, Derry, enables NWMS to meet the needs and demands of its customers. NWMS’s ability to design and fabricate pipework offsite allows it to deliver a safe, effective project on time and within budget.
As an ISO 9001 accredited company, NWMS has incorporated a weld logging / mapping system into its quality management system. This enables each project undertaken in the workshop or onsite to have full accountability and traceability, allowing identification of errors / failures in the product.
NWMS is extremely proud of its commitment to Health & Safety in the workplace, and in particular the care shown to the general wellbeing of its employees. This is best demonstrated in the firm’s annual health screening programs and regular updating of safety awareness training which is carried out in its in-house training suite with latest in interactive IT technology.
Explaining the background to the company, Gerry Campbell says: “Our first client was Seagate Technology at Dowland Road, Limavady where they manufactured substrates for the IT industry. We have remained resident contractors at Seagate’s Springtown plant in Derry, for which a £50 million expansion plan has been announced.
“We had won a routine maintenance contract for the Western Education & Library Boards in those early days and by opening a small fabrication workshop we were able to progress further when we branched into the process pipework and metal fabrication sector. From here, we grew steadily which led to us moving from Springtown to our new premises with integral workshop, fabrication and storage facilities on the Buncrana Road.
“Our workshop is working continuously with order books for the next two years and we’re trying to secure additional workshop space due to continued expansion.”
Winner of the British Small Business Champion award in 2008 and SNIPEF, Constructionline, OFTEC and Safe T Cert accredited, NWMS boasts an impressive client that includes Seagate Technology, HSC (Health and Social Care), Ulster University, Derry City and Strabane District Council, E+I Engineering Group, Winthrop Engineering, Graham, Jones Engineering Group, Lynskey Engineering and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
One of the most prestigious projects NWMS has completed in recent years was the refurbishment of the iconic Bishop’s Gate Hotel in Derry. Built in 1899, this grade B1 listed Edwardian-style building underwent extensive renovation to become the high-end boutique hotel it is today. Other projects the well-known mechanical services contractor has worked on in Northern Ireland include the new MacMillan Health & Wellbeing Centre in Altnagelvin Hospital, the North West Regional College, Strand Road, Derry and the Primark store extension in Belfast. It has also carried out endoscopy unit fitouts in various Health Trust Hospitals across the province.
NWMS has a growing customer-base south of the border and is currently collaborating with Winthrop on a couple of major projects in Dublin. The company was awarded the mechanical services and installation contract for the East Quad for the DIT Grangegorman Campus. This will accommodate academic activities and facilities required for the College of Sciences & Health, College of Engineering & Built Environment and the College of Arts & Tourism.
“We have made big inroads in the Republic of Ireland market and it all started when we had 44 men working for Jones Engineering on Intel’s Super Fab site in Leixlip, Co. Kildare in 2013. This led to us securing further work at the Bristol-Myers Squibb and Microsoft facilities in Dublin as well as at the Coca-Cola and Biogen facilities in Wexford and Cork respectively,” Gerry explains.
The affable company director concludes by thanking NWMS’s clients for their loyalty and support, and its staff, who he refers to as the ‘backbone of the business’.
“We are fortunate to have extremely dedicated staff with a positive attitude, some of who have been with us since the beginning. Our team of project managers, quantity surveyors, fabricators, plumbing and heating engineers, welders and office staff carry out first-class work. I can’t praise them highly enough.”
Here’s to the next 20 years of NWMS which is continuously looking for new ways of improving the already high-quality services and products that it provides to leading industry clients and customers.
North West Mechanical
Services Ltd (NWMS)
Unit 13,
Elagh Business Park,
Buncrana Road,
Derry
BT48 8QF
Telephone: +44 (0)28 71279008
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.nwms.org
Taken from Building Ireland Magazine, September, Vol 5 No 9
