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The Company
Founded in 1919 by Colonel John Reid, the firm is still family owned and occupies a 4 acre site at Christchurch in Dorset
We have a modern computer equipped structural design office and our engineers are able to design almost any type of structure. We specialise in INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS of every type, as well as SPORTS STADIA, AIRCRAFT HANGARS, WAREHOUSES, GRAIN STORES and BRIDGES, etc., which are made in the seven workshops at Christchurch. We also provide cladding, insulation, overhead cranes, gantries, doors, windows, ventilation and all the accessories needed for the complete structure.

Since 1919 we have shipped our work all over the World. Even now a large proportion of our production is exported to places as far apart as Iceland near the Arctic Circle and Raratonga in the South Pacific; to Russia, Asia, Africa, the` Middle East and Mediterranean countries, some of the mid Atlantic Islands and almost all the Caribbean Islands and Central and South America to its southernmost tip. About half of this work has been erected or supervised by company engineers.

MICHAEL REID M.B.E.

MANAGING DIRECTOR

ROLLO REID C.Eng F.I.Struct.E, M.I.C.E.

Chartered Engineer

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

World Wide Civil and Structural engineering experience on all types of structures

SIMON BOYD F.Inst.D

CONTRACTS DIRECTOR

One of our mobile cranes

PETER REID

DIRECTOR

Purchasing and Marine Department

TIMOTHY REID

DIRECTOR

Drawing Office

Steel

Corus steel rolled to British Standards is used by us almost exclusively

Computers in the Office & Works

Computers are used so widely nowadays that they are hardly remarkable.

What is important is the software. We first started storing non-variable data on magnetic card twenty five years ago to improve our design and estimating service. When micro computers first became available in the 1970s we searched for suitable software. Finding none to suit our requirements, our engineers worked for some years to produce their own, with the result that we can now produce optimised structural designs and quotations in 10 minutes instead of 10 days, subject to contract.

What we have today is a system which is unique not only in the U.K. and Europe but in the whole world.

We have continued developing our software to deal with most of the repetitive, time consuming drawing office detail work and can now operate the latest computer controlled drilling lines and punching and cropping lines in our works, directly from disks programmed in the Drawing Office. This cuts out the usual three operations of measuring out and centre punching, known in the old days as "plating". Drilled and punched steelwork is produced at a rate so phenomenally fast and with such accuracy as to make the old methods appear positively archaic. A beam which a few years ago would take 1½ hours to mark out and drill, now takes about 6 minutes or less - 15 times faster and much more accurate!

We CADDED and CAMMED before the catchwords came and our work on developing programs continues apace.

Archspan Patent

REIDsteel have been designing, manufacturing and exporting wide span steel buildings for years. You will understand that this entails making pieces that are small, easy to bundle and export pack; rugged to survive shipment; simple to bolt together on site; with excellent dimensional integrity so that everything fits in exactly the right way. In this way we could make grandstands with straight facias; hotels with windows that fit; and in particular wide span hangars with correct tolerances for doors to fit and operate. This requirement coupled with all the export requirements led, through generation after generation of trial and adjustment, to the evolution of the REIDsteel Archspan frame. This revolutionary frame type is so successful that it has been patented (proof that it was indeed a new structural concept).

This Archspan truss has proved a winner worldwide, where the ease of fabrication, transportation, galvanising and erection has made REIDsteel unequalled at home and abroad for the design and build of hangars (and high bay warehouses, Arenas and other like structures).

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