Mr Kevin Byrne BA/AP

Venetian plastering and microcement finishes

  

I was born and brought up in Oldham, Lancashire, England where I have lived and worked all my life. I come from a family of plasterers: grandfather, great Uncle, father, brother, myself and son, so was essentially born into the trade. I worked my school holidays from thirteen years old helping my father and brother. In 1977 I left school at the age of fifteen and got an apprenticeship at Oldham Council.

I didn’t enjoy this because I was working mainly on small repairs to tenanted houses, however, I soon went to work with my father on housing and commercial work, which was tough, but I enjoyed it immensely.

My brother and I worked together for five years from 1982 before I started my own successful business, sometimes employing up to fifty people depending on the size of the contracts secured.

Although for a large amount of that time I had no formal qualifications I became a competent solid plasterer and business man. In 2007 I was asked to help out at The Oldham College teaching practical plastering to adults in evening class. While teaching at The Oldham College I gained all my plastering qualifications and teaching qualifications through to degree level. I stayed at the Oldham College teaching on a part time basis until 2011 and continued to run a scaled down version of my plastering business, employing myself and two other operatives.

In 2013 I was offered an opportunity to teach plastering on a full time basis at Kirklees College, which I took until I retired from teaching in 2021/22. I am a member od The National Association of Plastering Lecturers (NAPL) and an associate APL of the Worshipful Company of Plaisterers. I have also up until 2022 done consultancy work for The City & Guilds developing plastering qualifications. I am proud that I have played some part in developing the next generation of plasterers and I am currently teaching once again two days a week with apprentice plasterers at Hopwood Hall College while still working in industry.

For around the last 15 years I have added on to my plastering business Venetian plastering and Microcement finishes. This has been brilliant for me and I have heavily invested in myself doing a lot of product training across the UK and also in Italy to gain the knowledge of this extremely skill full and high-end decorative finishes. It’s a big investment in training and also a whole different set of tools which both come as a high cost, however over the years I have more than been well compensated financially for my investment and have also met and been trained and mentored by some world class leaders in this field from all around the world.

Train the trainer day at Leeds College of Building delivering an introduction to bespoke decorative surface finishes many thanks for the invite gentlemen was a great day