To mark the end of its 25th anniversary celebrations, JTL chief executive Jon Graham has now drawn the winning entry to its competition to win a new van. All companies with a graduating or new JTL apprentice within the year were entered in the competition.
The winner of the 25th Anniversary Prize Draw was PK Engineering from Carlisle and office manager Denise Pape and apprentice Niall Keyes, whose recruitment helped make PK Engineering eligible for the competition, arrived at JTL’s National Centre in Birmingham to collect their prize. Owner of the business, Kevin Percival was over the moon to hear of their success in the prize draw. The company is a family business that started life in the 1980s.
JTL chief executive Jon Graham was there in Birmingham to hand over the keys to the silver Citroen Berlingo 1.6 HDi and Denise and Niall were clearly proud winners as they headed back up the M6 with their prize, shortly afterwards.
Jon Graham said: “We took the decision to give this fantastic prize away in our silver jubilee year as we wanted to give something back to the building services engineering sector in which our employers and apprentices work and thrive.
“These are exciting times for apprenticeships, and at JTL we’ve been delighted in the last year to achieve in excess of 2,000 new apprentice starts, with 6,000 current apprentices in total on our books. Among these are the apprentices of PK Engineering that are currently studying with us, making them a thoroughly deserving employer to win our prize draw! I’m delighted to hand over the keys to the van and hope it brings PK Engineering and its apprentices many thousands of miles of happiness.”
“We’re delighted to win this prize,” said Denise Pape from PK Engineering. “We didn’t really believe the telephone call we had telling us we’d won it – we were sure it was someone having a laugh! But it really is an excellent prize and we’re immensely grateful to have won it. The news that we have the new van arriving has seen many of our team suggesting that it might be best if they had it – we’ll see about allocating it when we get back to Carlisle! But it will get well used in the months and years ahead.”
PK Engineering has been established for more than 30 years and currently employs a team of 48. The business has grown rapidly in the past couple of years and is seeing encouraging growth in the marketplace, particularly in the past twelve months. Whilst it operates predominantly in the Cumbia and Scottish border areas it has teams working around the UK on projects – currently as far south as Devon. The company works in the commercial sector and as well as the M&E Division, has a Controls Division and a Fire and Security Division.
PK Engineering currently employs ten apprentices including four it has taken on this year. Its apprentices stay with the business and move on to positions of responsibility within the company once they qualify. It is convinced that working with JTL has always brought it huge benefits – even more so now they have won the van!
Picture shows:
Pic shows Denise Pape, PK engineering office manager, Jon Graham, chief executive at JTL and Niall Keyes, the apprentice whose move to the company three months ago was the qualifying entry in the draw for the van