The team
Paul Darrington and Ewan Craig run Graceland day-to-day. The crew who survey your site are the crew who install it — no account-management layer, no outsourced install teams.
- 1996Original safety decking
- Class 3BS EN 12811-1:2003
- SSIPFASET & SMAS accredited
- 48 hrQuote turnaround
Paul and Ewan pick up the phone.
Most specialist installers in the UK safety decking category have a middle layer. An account manager takes your call. A surveyor visits your site. A scheduler books the crew. An installer you have never spoken to rolls up on the day. Four conversations, four people, four chances for the brief to slip.
Graceland does not work like that. The two people running the business are the two people you will end up speaking to, and the crew who survey your site are the crew who install it.
Paul Darrington — founder
Paul founded Graceland in 1996 and has run it, in one form or another, ever since. He is the person you will most likely meet on a pre-start survey for a new housebuilding programme or a care-home block, and he is the person signing off the technical call on system choice when a commercial floor plate does not fit the default.
On a working week Paul is on site more than he is in the yard. If you phone him on his mobile — the number is on the contact page — you are more likely to catch him in a hi-vis than behind a desk.
Paul founded what became The Original Safety Deck Company, and thirty years on he is still the person you will meet on the survey.
Ewan Craig — director
Ewan runs the day-to-day alongside Paul. On any given programme one of them will be the primary point of contact and the other is the fallback — you will almost always get one of them on the phone inside the same working day, whichever one you asked for first.
Ewan tends to lead on the multi-plot housebuilding programmes and the rolling-pattern apartment installs, and on the commercial work where the bay-by-bay system recommendation is the interesting part of the survey.
The wider crew
Behind Paul and Ewan, Graceland's senior installers run the crews that actually lay your platform. Every operative on site is CSCS-certified and every install is FASET-compliant, which is not a sales line — it is the minimum standard for anyone on a Graceland site.
On most installs the same senior installer leads a crew of two or three operatives from first plot to last, which is why the deck on your second plot goes in faster than the deck on your first. We do not rotate new people in mid-programme unless someone is off sick, and when we do, we tell you.
Part of the Beresford's group
Graceland is the sister company to Beresford's Flooring Ltd, an in-situ concrete contractor working on steel-framed buildings across the UK. The relationship is a big part of why a specialist installer based in St Neots can mobilise a crew to a care-home site in Kent within 7 days — the group gives us the operational backbone of a larger business without blurring the brand at the front.
The Beresford's group page explains how the relationship actually works on a Graceland project.
Who you will deal with, in one paragraph
You will deal with Paul or Ewan on the first call, on the pre-start survey, and on the handover walk-through. You will deal with one of our senior installers on the install day itself and on the dismantle, and that will be the same installer from first visit to last on any given programme. That is the whole team structure. There is no account layer, no outsourced survey arm, no sub-contracted install crew. If a decision needs to be made on your site, the person making it is the person whose name is on the Handover Certificate.
Keep reading
Our story
Graceland is The Original Safety Deck Company. Founded by Paul Darrington in 1996 and still surveying, supplying and installing nationwide from St Neots.
About / Our storyBeresford's Flooring — our sister company
Graceland is the sister company to Beresford's Flooring Ltd, an in-situ concrete contractor on steel-framed buildings across the UK. How the group relationship gives a specialist installer nationwide reach from St Neots.
About / BeresfordsSite survey
Safety decking site surveys where needed. Send Graceland your drawings and project details first; most jobs can be assessed and quoted without a visit.
Services / Site survey