Kiernan Structural Steel (KSSL) has announced the creation of 50 jobs at the official opening of its new state-of-the-art extension to its Longford structural steel manufacturing facility. KSSL is the leading Irish structural steel manufacturing firm and now employ 150 people split between their Longford plant and their construction sites. The announcement is part of a new investment programme of more than €3.5million, with 19 of the new jobs in direct manufacturing roles. The balance of the jobs is as a direct result of increased onsite activity and includes quantity surveyors, draughtsmanship and installation. Recruitment for these positions is ongoing and positions are expected to be filled by the middle of the summer 2016. This new investment is in response to increased demand from clients for the facility to apply high quality fire proofing intumescent paints particularly for multi-national clients. “Kiernan Steel was founded on being a solution provider for technically challenging structural steel projects for the Irish and the British steel construction industries with an eye for further market expansion. This new extension gives us the opportunity to increase our annual production capacity and has led to the securing of some very large projects in Ireland and the UK,” said KSSL managing director Frank Kiernan. The extension includes a new paint shop which is required to meet the growing need for off-site applied fire intumescent painting. As part of the new paint shop KSSL have added a one of a kind in Ireland post fabrication Kaltenbach shot blaster (3m x 1.8m) which cleans the surfaces of steel members prior to the application of paint. KSSL also added 13,000 sq ft to the engineering workshop and a new high speed steel plate cutting and drilling line.