FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Going the Extra Mile

Staff outside the offices at Oakfield Road in 1984. From the left: Mavis Paterson, Eileen Smith, Peter Moore (Yardman), myself, Peter Haynes, Moira Hurst, and Terry Able (Plant Manager).

side. (Ron’s wife was friends with my wife Kim; and he and I went fishing together. Ron would help with all future acquisitions, and would eventually – many years later – come to join us on a freelance basis.) Anyway, with help from Jack and Ron, George Cole and I did eventually come to some kind of agreement, and in 1984 we all moved into our new, spacious headquarters at Oakfield Road. There was another guy that joined us around this time who would play a large role in the development of the company. I had been having problems in the workshop: I couldn’t find a foreman that I could get on with. Jim Manning came up with a name of someone he knew who had been working on the Thames Barrier. The bloke didn’t sound right to me at first, but I agreed to see him. At the interview, everything was going well, and I was pretty impressed with the guy. Then I mentioned

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