May has been a good month so far. Obviously not from a global chaos and economic stability point of view, but just a bit of sunshine has been enough to put a spring in our step.

I felt the same lift recently when I visited Celeros Flow Technology/Clyde Union Pumps at their historic site in Cathcart. The visit was prompted by their plans to celebrate one hundred and forty years of engineering at the site, and as a recent winner at our annual awards, I was interested to hear if their success had sustained in these tough times.

The Cathcart site was opened in 1886 after the roots of the engineering firm began in 1871 led by the two Weir brothers, George and James. The company focused on innovative inventions in pumping equipment for the steam ships being built in Clyde shipyards, and like many they pivoted to support the first and second world war efforts.

During WWI alone 6,000 people worked at the site, 2,000 of them women, and they produced eleven hundred planes and aero engines. 

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The notable birthday marks an enduring piece of Scotland’s justified engineering pride, with the set-up of a machine shop and smithy in Cathcart at the end of the newly extended railway line on what was then an original "greenfield" site.

The buildings that followed and remain today featured industrial architecture of real ambition, including a 1912........

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