ENTRIES have opened for next year’s 2023 CFJ Awards, which is destined to be bigger and better than anything that’s gone before. This year we’ll be using a brand new, updated, user-friendly entry system which will allow entrants to return to their entries, upload images and progress their installations through the system as necessary.
Last year’s CFJ Awards, which took place on Friday 9 September at Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire, and which was hosted by nationally acclaimed comedian, Jo Caulfield, wowed the industry in what was undoubtedly the biggest event of its kind in the flooring industry. Winners were announced in all the product and company, installation and individual sections, with about 500 guests in attendance.
For the winners in each installation category, look under the tab ‘2022 winners’ on the menu at the top of this page. The independent panel of judges included new judge, Graeme Dewar, director at GD Surveyors. GDS is a company of building surveyors and property consultants based in the southeast and London, with specialisms in the social housing and insurance sectors. Graeme joined our existing panel of Fiona Bowman, senior FM consultant; John Butler, founder of John Butler Contracts; and Richard Renouf, independent flooring consultant.
John, who entered flooring as a carpet-fitter in 1963 and who was trained by Keith Shenton, until recently the oldest active floorlayer in the UK, formed his first company, Butler & Machin, in 1967. Later, he formed Contract Floor Installations which ran until 1995. Today, he runs John Butler Contracts, which specialises in several areas of flooring including retail areas in airports.
Richard is an independent consultant and a consultant member of the CFA, a member of the UK Register of Expert Witnesses and a provisional member of the Expert Witness Institute. He’s also worked as an independent expert witness for furnishings complaints for more than 27 years, writing reports and giving evidence in court claims. He’s also a community first responder, attending 999 calls to save lives in his community – so he knows how to deal with matters of life and death.
As a facilities management consultant with over 25 years’ experience in the property and FM world, Fiona has extensive client-side contract flooring experience both of fit-out, refurbishment and construction projects with large corporates, financial institutions, insurance sector, education sector, healthcare sector, local authorities, and charities. Understanding the complexities and pressures encountered by flooring contractors and manufacturers, delivering within tight timescales with sometimes difficult access issues into complex workspaces, has given her an excellent background to judge the CFJ Awards for the past four years.
She continues to operate as an FM consultant nationally and is also a non-exec director of a housing association in the northeast. She’s an author and an internationally recognised speaker and campaigner against domestic abuse, regularly invited to speak at high profile conferences, in parliament and in the media about the importance of employers in the lives of employees who may be victims and survivors of domestic abuse. She is an ambassador for Alpha Vesta CIC and EIDA. Twitter: Fiona_Bowman LinkedIN: Fiona Bowman MBA
Notable wins this year included Loughton Contracts at Theatre Royal in London (Installation of the Year); George Carter from Rudge Brothers & James Ltd, Bristol as Apprentice of the Year (AOTY); Alan Gayle, founder of AG Flooring; Polyflor for Manufacturer of the Year; and Carpet & Flooring for Distributor of the Year. Junckers meanwhile claimed the Sustainability Initiative award.
After the success of the 2022 awards, John Heath, chief executive of Kick-Start Publishing, which publishes CFJ, said: ‘I’m really pleased to see so many people are invested in our awards, from our wonderful sponsors to our judges and all those who entered their best installations to be evaluated. This day couldn’t happen without them, and on behalf of CFJ and Kick-start, I thank them all.’
