What Steve Donegani and Ron Mayle don’t know about Nuway isn’t worth knowing! Together they’ve clocked up almost 80 years’ service with the business.
Since 1999, they’ve trained hundreds of installers in the UK and beyond in the art of fitting Nuway rigid engineered entrance matting. If you’re thinking about attending a CITB accredited course at our newly extended, dedicated training facility, you’ll be in their capable hands!
.jpg "Ron Mayle")
Ron Mayle, CITB approved trainer
.jpg "Steve Donegani")
Steve Donegani, CITB approved trainer
Meet Ron....
I’ve been working for Nuway since January 1976...almost all my working life. Longer than Steve, he’s the new boy! After leaving school I was an apprentice plater/welder for a crane manufacturer but I left after a year to work for Nuway Endurance Matting, as it was then. The factory was in Coalport at that time. I started out as a fresh-faced 17-year-old shop labourer and gradually worked my way around the factory until I managed to land myself in the mat shaping department.
From there it was into the service department and a job on the road. The in-house team that I joined was responsible for installing the vast majority of Nuway entrance mats at that time, not just in the UK but across Europe too. The company even flew me out to Toronto to install Nuway matting at a new shopping centre. The installation was to be a showcase for a new Canadian distributor, so it had to be absolutely perfect. It took two weeks to complete.
I first went into training in 1999 when Bonar Floors bought the Nuway business (prior to the acquisition by Forbo). A strategic decision was taken to give our contractor customers all the skills they needed to fit Nuway mats correctly and safely themselves. A new training facility was created in the factory and I became a Nuway trainer, helping to set up different courses and passing on my skills to installers. As this took off, I did fewer and fewer installations, my very last one being at the Aviva Stadium, the home of Irish Rugby.
When the service department was disbanded I was given a new role as a Technical Support Manager, a wide ranging role covering all of Bonar Floors’ (and later Forbo’s) product portfolio, but with a key focus on developing and delivering Nuway training alongside Steve.
Meet Steve...
Ron calls me the new boy because I’ve only been here for 36 years! Still serving my time! My background is a little different from Ron’s. After leaving school in 1974, I completed an indentured mechanical engineering apprenticeship with the NCB. I joined Nuway’s maintenance team in 1981 and soon became the chargehand over a team of five, responsible for maintaining all the machines at the Coalport factory site.
When I moved to the Halesfield factory site at Telford in 1983, I started a new role and went from dealing with machines all day to dealing with customers and their matting designs. A totally different role. In those days, no-one had heard of CAD. We all sat at our drawing boards armed with our scale rules and compasses. When talk started of a new Service Department I was keen to get into this new department which meant being out on the road alongside Ron and other colleagues.
There was a time when we were seeing more of the other Service guys than our own families. We frequently drove across Europe – to Germany, France, the Czech Republic and Ireland. Unfortunately, the expenses weren’t brilliant, but we survived. The only time we ever went to nice hotels in those days was when we were fitting their entrance mats! It was B&Bs and guest houses for us but it was still enjoyable.
I find training very rewarding. It’s great to know that you’ve enabled hundreds of guys to become competent Nuway/ Entrance Matting fitters. I am a Technical Support Manager like Ron.When we’re not running Nuway courses, we’re inspecting installations, reporting on complaints and helping customers to implement effective cleaning and maintenance regimes. That’s one of the best things about this job....no two days are ever the same, variety is the spice of life.
