Southern Testing Begins its 50th Anniversary Celebrations

This week (28th January to 4th February) marks the 17th year of National Storytelling Week so, as Southern Testing begins its 50th Anniversary Celebrations in 2017 here is the beginning of our story!

Our story started with our founding members who were three Civil Engineers returning to the UK after having worked in Southern Africa. They were partners in a successful firm of Consulting Engineers and owned a materials testing laboratory in Northern Rhodesia (present day Zambia), aptly named Northern Testing Laboratories. They worked extensively on developing the roads and infrastructure in Central and Southern Africa.

Upon settling in the South of England, the partners were determined to put their collective knowledge and expertise to practice and setup a materials testing service to serve Southern England. Hence, Southern Testing Laboratories was founded in 1967.

Always rooted in the construction industry, the company expanded rapidly to provide geotechnical ground investigation and engineering geology and geotechnical consulting services, in addition to its in-house soils and materials testing facility.

Jumping forward to the  1980’s, following a further period of rapid growth, the company launched a specialist environmental ground investigation consultancy and remediation service to meet the needs that extensive environmental legislation placed upon the construction industry as a whole.

Today our Head Office remains in East Grinstead, Sussex near Gatwick with regional offices in Northampton, Swindon and Warrington trading as ST Consult.

Our head office Keeble House is named after Mr. Donovan Keeble, one of the three founding members and Chairman of Southern Testing from 1967 until 1992.

So, this is the beginning of our story there will be much more to follow in future posts and celebrations throughout the year.