Dr Benfield then founded what became a substantial firm of contractors and house-builders, developed a multi office practice of surveyors, valuers and estate agents, and served as a main board director for an advertising agency and several property and health care related plc’s. 

Currently a Trustee of the Walter Segal Self Build Trust, which promotes the use of simple timber frame structures for low cost, self build housing and other community structures, Dr Benfield was a member on the Faculty of Building’s select Low Cost Housing committee, a delegate to UNCTAD for the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council, and a Founder Member of the Community Land Trust. 

As an academic researcher and private consultant he has travelled widely throughout the EU, Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and has extensive knowledge of European land tenure, planning, housing and property development. Collectively these give him an enviable understanding of different land, property and housing markets, together with related issues and regulations.

Having written on property development and planning issues from a futurological, environmental and social equity perspective, he has addressed conferences in Australia, Canada, India, and most European countries on these subjects.  His interests include reading, writing, swimming, walking, poetry, and travel.  

Director of Finance, Administration & Co. Secretary  
Freda Sanders BSc (Hons) ACIS PG Dip

Freda is a widely experienced and well qualified Company Secretary and Financial Director.  Until 2000 Freda was Group Financial Director and Deputy CEO of Vanguard Engineering Holdings Limited, a privately owned international logistics and facilities management company with 15 subsidiaries engaged in the business of industrial and commercial relocation, installations, transport and secure record keeping.  

Prior to that, as managing Director she undertook the turnaround of a mid sized company manufacturing and selling talking books for the blind internationally.  Her career also encompasses financial, accounting, and administrative roles in the manufacturing sector, local authorities, education, entertainment, and service industries.  

More recently she has acted as a Management Consultant, conducting assignments over a varied range of companies and business sectors, including undertaking due diligence exercises and developing acquisition proposals.  

A qualified psychologist, Freda was awarded a Winston Churchill Traveling Fellowship in 2000 to investigate the use of IT in the education of children with special needs.

Manager -Cost & Management Accounts, Information & Training  
Craig Stewart ACCA

Learning about the importance of ‘finance’ from his time in private Chartered Accountancy practice, Craig opted for the more practical, day-to-day application of his skills and enthusiasm for ‘figures’ in cost and management accountancy.  After qualifying he broadened his knowledge and experience of business and finance working first with various governmental bodies, including the Patents Office, then a National Vehicle Leasing Company, before becoming Chief Accountant for a multi million division of a National Steel Manufacturing concern.

Craig joined ATT in 1998, since when he has actively participated in the expansion and growth of the Company.  He has been responsible for the continued improvement and upgrading of the accounting function and provides relevant and timely information for the Directors.

Having previously trained as the ISO 9002 quality supervisor for a National Leasing Company, Craig has an excellent insight for the current implementation of Investors In People recognition by Benfield ATT.

Outside work, Craig is the Auditor of the Methodist Church, South Wales, and assists in local youth work.  His interests include art history, the cinema and historic architecture.

Technical and Professional Services Manager
Richard Kennedy

After qualifying in Building and gaining and HNC in Civil Engineering, Richard worked with the nationally respected consultants Travers Morgan, gaining valuable experience on various prestigious projects, including the North Wales coast road.  Having honed his skills and knowledge of engineering and draughtsmanship on roads, bridges and tunnels, he moved to the housing industry, working alongside master architect Barry Borak he developed his special blend of timber frame capabilities and adapting these to UK architectural, planning, engineering, building regulation and associated requirements.

Richard subsequently became senior technical designer for a well-respected importer and provider of Swedish timber frame structures.  Here he was responsible for maintaining and developing the firm’s high standards of design, insulation and pre-manufacture; developing these to satisfy the peculiarities of both the UK’s climate and its improving Building Regulation requirements. 

As they increasingly focussed on the ‘self-build’ market, Richard applied his knowledge, engineering skills and ingenuity to the expanding need to provide prefabricated building ‘kits’.  This demanded extensive interactive team work with multiple contractors of differing size, specialist haulers able to deliver large loads to almost inaccessible sites, individually trained erection teams capable of working in remote, un-serviced locations, and the like.  

In recognition of his peculiar abilities to comprehend and manage the complex and demandingly detailed work in delivering practical, workable, structural solutions for widely varied architectural and other unique individual designs, Richard was selected to head up a new Community and Commercial buildings division.  He then moved to become Technical Manager for ATT, applying his breadth of knowledge to the demands and logistics of manufacturing timber framed structures for diverse residential, educational, health, hospitality, leisure and other markets. 

Under Benfield ATT Richard has added the management of Professional Services to his portfolio, as the Company extends and improves its facilities in response to the demands of an increasing range of both new and repeat customers.  Today he not only controls the technical design, structural engineering, manufacturing drawings and materials schedules for timber frame buildings, he also oversees architectural and landscape design, planning and building regulation approvals, and such other professional and technical design requirements requested by customers for schools, doctors surgeries, dental clinics, nursing homes, flats and other multi storey buildings, hotels, leisure lodges and the like.

Richards outside interests include skiing, diving and generally ‘keeping fit’

External Contracts Manager
Phil Edmonds

Phil’s attraction to the construction industry began as a trainee Quantity Surveyor with Laing, the highly respected international firm of contractors.  After gaining both HNC and HND qualifications in Building Construction he worked on flagship projects like Cheltenham Hospital, Supermarket and Office Developments, and County Authority maintenance schemes, before moving to ARC Homes to broaden his experience with this well-known national firm of quality builders and developers.  

After handling some fairly major project for ARC, including a 120 house development at the St. Mellion Golf & Country Club in Cornwall, Phil moved into Project Management with the progressive, craft based design and build Gloucester based firm, Rutherford Developments.  Besides providing him with invaluable experience of Office, Hotel, and prestigious Showroom projects for highly acclaimed organisations like Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, Jaguar, BMW, VW and Renault, he also built several office blocks and a luxury hotel.  It was during this time that his ‘love affair’ with all forms of timber construction as the pre-eminent form of system building, first took root. 

Seeking to develop this interest further, Phil moved to the nationally renowned Trussed Roof and Timber Frame Company, Hill Leigh (Timber Products).  Here, besides being Project Manager responsible for such prestigious projects as the Joint Services Command and Staff College at Swindon, a new Care Centre for the Blind in Somerset, Pirbright Barracks accommodation, and various nursing and care homes, this also gave him the opportunity to train and become proficient in the design and manufacture of trussed rafters, TGI joists, roofing and flooring systems.

Phil joined ATT as a Project Manager in 2000, rapidly being promoted to oversee multiple School, Clinic, Nursing Home, Retirement Home, Village Hall, Community Centre and other ‘special projects’.  These included a purpose designed, system build complex shipped to and erected on the Channel Island of Sark, which has no roads and particularly difficult harbourage for this type of operation. 

Today, as External Contracts Manager for Benfield ATT, Phil is responsible for all works and services ‘outside the factory gate’.  Besides visual access and site surveys plus frame erection, this now extends to include land and soil surveys, builder and erection crew training, foundation and drainage works, part or complete contract build services, including heating, mechanical and electrical services, plus landscaping and interior decorating works.  Given the very special nature of timber frame construction methods, this involves Phil in a range of logistical issues, from pre-scaffolding, power and welfare supplies, to on the day co-ordination of deliveries, cranes and forklifts, erection crews, and all associated health and safety issues.

Production Manager
Andrew Gwilllym 

Rightly, Andrew is proud to have been apprenticed as a Carpenter and Builder with the National Coal Board, who were prized employers before being de-nationalised.  On completion of his apprenticeship he was selected to become an ash and moisture content examiner in the board’s Scientific Department, where he gained important knowledge relevant to the use and protection of timber in construction.   

After gaining his City & Guilds qualifications in Carpentry and Building Studies, Andrew entered the specialist bar and shop fitting sector with Tregdar Bar Fitters, where he developed his practical skills and experience in joinery, cabinetry, high quality finishing and the renovation of licensed premises.

It was these skills that Andrew brought to ATT when they were first established in Cwmbran.  Here he applied his specialist knowledge in the development of manufacturing methods and processes for the Company to ensure the high, cost effective quality of the system building products for which the it has subsequently become nationally recognised.  This included evolution of our FABRIK 17 to 25 systems for open and closed cell panels, complex fire barrier panels, and the factory fitting of windows and other finished building components, including integral service channels, electrical plugs, switches and other fittings. 

Andrew’s capabilities and experience have also been put to good effect in projects as diverse as mounting exhibitions, including the award winning Alexandra Palace Self Build Exhibition, the development, containerisation, shipment and erection of complete three bedroom house ‘kits’ to the Falkland Islands, and our modular range of leisure lodges for holiday parks, individual retreats and home extensions.

In addressing what others might regard as intractable manufacturing issues for building systems, Andrew has produced wall panels up to 6 metres wide and 5 metres high, addressing the logistics of handling, erection and installation of these by working directly with site as well as production teams.  His experience continues to be invaluable to Benfield ATT as we research and develop further new and improved ‘Advanced Timber Technologies’ for the future.

Technical Sales Managers
Paul Long  - Wales and South West

Paul has worked in the timber and timber engineering industry since leaving school in Suffolk in 1979.  After gaining direct forestry and timber mill experience, he first qualified with the old established firm Eastern Counties Sawmills, in hardwood measurement and timber grading.

With his appetite for all things timber truly whetted, Paul moved into timber engineering, specialising in roof structures, trussed rafters, laminated timbers, bolted trusses, and composites.  Working in both structural design and sales with nationally well-known organisations, like Marlow’s, Llewelyn’s, and Sherry & Haycock, he progressively moved into manufacturing management and was responsible for increasing profitability in several facilities under his management, as well as establishing and growing a new ‘green field’ plant from inception.    

After gaining such experience throughout Scotland and England, including running several major projects, like that for the London Housing Consortium (LHC), in 1999 he moved to Wales to join ATT.  Here Paul has honed his broad knowledge of timber engineering, focussing this on the particular requirements of Timber Frame Housing and Special Structures.  This has involved him in the design and management of large commercial and leisure industry projects, as well as having responsibility for estimating new works and special projects. 

Today, Benfield ATT is pleased to place Paul’s enviable track record at the service of its wide and growing range of clients and professional ‘partners’, from surveyors, planners, architects, and engineers, through individual self builders, contractors and developers, to public authorities and quango’s.

Colin Driver – East Anglia 

In 1975, Colin joined the well-respected Quantity Surveying company of George Corderoy & Co of Buckingham Gate, London; where he qualified with an HNC in Building Construction and I.Q.S Part 2 with endorsements in Law and Economics. This solid grounding in quantities and contracts have proven invaluable throughout his career.

He joined the Timber Engineering Division of Marlow & Co in 1980 and his skill and enthusiasm for the products led to rapid promotion. Over the 15 years he was there, he held the positions of Chief Estimator for Timber Frame and Truss Rafters, Contracts Manager, Technical Sales Manager, Commercial Manager and UK Marketing and Sales Manager. He was directly influential in taking the company from a predominately East Anglian company to a true UK National leader. He rates one of his largest contributions as heading up the prestigious LHC contract that the company held for an unprecedented seven years.

Colin continued his career in Business Development with Raab Karcher and John Mansfield Timber, in both cases indulging his passions by initiating a ‘Build Pack’ division and assessing the growing Timber Framed housing market.

After setting up and running his own Quantity Surveying business he was approached by ATT in 2001 with the challenge of evolving the systems of design and supply of timber frame structures within the Leisure Industry. He now is fully committed in the pursuance of quality timber framed structures and professional services that Benfield ATT offers to the industry. 

Malcolm Ellis – South East  

Malcolm’s long and distinguished career in the Engineered Timber Structures Industry began in 1964 when he joined the well-established and respected firm of Guildway.  His training with them both on and off the job progressively developed his insightful understanding of all aspects of timber frame construction, from standard frames, to floor & roof cassettes and other components of industrialised building systems.  

Over the years these attributes have been refined through ‘partnering’ style arrangements with leading national developers, like Wimpey, and local authorities, like Horsham.  Malcolm’s career has taken him to all corners of the UK, where he has represented nationally recognised firms like Merronbrook and Howarth Timber.  

Now based in the South East, Malcolm sees himself as both a problem solver and ‘bridge builder’.  Working closely with clients he gets ‘inside’ their design issues to develop appropriate specifications and ideas, feeding these back to our Technical and Structural Design department to facilitate fast, cost conscious solutions to keep projects on time and within budget.  At the same time he has developed a very personal form of after sales service, applying these concerns and skills to the design and construction of a diverse range of projects, from individual houses and flats to medical, educational, religious, and sports facilities.  

Malcolm joined ATT in 1998 with a brief to address the small to medium sized builder and developer markets of the South East, since when he has been responsible for promoting increasingly good relationships and assisting numerous firms to improve their benefits from our quality controlled products.  These have ranged from small retirement bungalows, though minor mansions for the rich and famous, to cliff edge developments, multi storey blocks of flats, nursing and residential homes, schools, surgeries, changing rooms, and specialist schemes in environmentally sensitive areas.  Today Malcolm’s role has been extended to enable him to offer the full range of products and services now offered by Benfield ATT.  

As a seasoned traveller, these days Malcolm favours France and lists ‘fine wines’ as a favourite pastime.