Company History

The company was founded in 1920 when engineers James Grant and William Livingston went into partnership. Both men had been brought up in and around the shipyards on the Clyde, where they served their apprenticeships with boat builders and constructional engineers Mechans Ltd.

As young men with skills, they had ambitions to make their mark in the world and it was a natural step for the pair to move with their families to London, where they set up a workshop and were soon prospering by providing a range of workboats, lifeboats and general engineering for the capital’s docks and Thameside ports area.

When Grant died, Livingston needed a new business partner and an offer was made to George Fawkes, a former colleague of both Grant and Livingston from their apprenticeship days in Scotland. George had also moved to East London and the offer came at a time when his wife was expecting another baby that was to bring the number of children in the family to fourteen!

And so began the Fawkes family’s involvement with Grant & Livingston. Eventually, most of the children would come to work for the company.

In the late 1920s, the petrochemical industry was developing fast and due to their plate work knowledge, gained in the ship building industry, Grant & Livingston were ideally equipped and skilled to provide the vast numbers of storage tanks, pressure vessels and associated equipment needed for the new refineries and tank farms. It heralded a whole new field of work, but they soon became specialists, winning contracts from many of the world’s major petrochemical companies, as they do to this day.

During the Second World War Grant & Livingston devoted its engineering skills to the war effort. Besides being heavily involved in producing workboats and equipment their work included secret projects, one of which earned them a special mention in despatches by the Air Ministry. Other key work included the production of ships’ lifeboats an area in which the company became highly skilled and won them numerous patents for the innovations that they introduced to the design of these vital craft.

The death of Livingston, saw ownership of the company go to his partner George Fawkes, who ran the company up until his death in 1949.

He left the business to five of his sons George, Malcolm, John, Bob and Ken. All of who had served their apprenticeships with the company. So began a second generation of the Fawkes family within the company.

During the next decade the company’s workload increasingly came from the petrochemical industry, with boat building slowly coming to an end as merchant shipping and the docks fell into decline, added to which there was an increasing use of FRP (fibre reinforced plastics) within the small craft industry.

By 1967 the company was being run by John Fawkes (son of George Fawkes and grandson of the original George), with his father and Malcolm still actively involved.

This marked the start of the family’s third generation in the company, reinforced yet again in 1971 when the son of Malcolm, and yet another Malcolm, joined the company. The newcomer brought a wider breadth of knowledge to the company, having trained and qualified as a Chartered Civil and Structural Engineer and previously worked as a consultant.

Over the next 30 years he drew on this to help take the company from strength to strength, consolidating its success but not risking expansion just for the sake of it, in a period that witnessed many casualties in the engineering industry.

Grant & Livingston’s modest size underpinned their continued success. By specialising in a bespoke quality engineering service, the company has built an enviable reputation. Its highly knowledgeable, efficient and reliable team designs and manufactures precisely to customers’ requirements enabling the company to proudly claim that it is capable of taking on jobs from which many might shy away.

In 1982, Malcolm became Managing Director, while brother Ewan, who served his apprenticeship with the family business but left to run a branch of a leading plant hire company, rejoined as Chairman also in 1982.

The strong family team working for the company includes Malcolm’s wife, Shirley and their son-in-law James.

During 2005 a fourth generation of the family, Malcolm and Shirley’s son Duncan, joined the business.

Qualified as a Naval Architect, Duncan has had a highly successful career in the yacht building/design industry. He is an Incorporated Engineer and a member of The Royal Institute of Naval Architects.

The continuity of strong family management is assured and by embarking on a totally new concept in narrow boat design – the Phoenix project - the company is not only returning to its roots, but has the exciting opportunity of expanding yet again into an area in which it once excelled.