Elliotts has appointed engineered wood designer Andrew Drummond to drive its new joist design and manufacturing service.

Mr Drummond has over five years' experience in timber and design engineering and will produce floor and roof layouts along with full engineering calculations. The I-Joists and Laminated Veneer Lumber, which comes with all the necessary metalwork and ancillary timbers, are supplied from the company's Christchurch branch, giving customers easy access to the joists with a fast lead-time.

Tom Elliott, managing director of the independent merchant, said: "Andrew brings an exciting mix of expertise in product design and knowledge of timber to our team and I'm looking forward to seeing our customers reap the rewards. The new streamlined service will guide our customers throughout the whole process and communication will also be greatly improved as they will no longer need to go through a third party to design their joist systems."

Mr Drummond added: "I'm delighted to join the team at Elliotts, especially to head up such an exciting new service for our customers. Our design and manufacturing service, coupled with the ease of the Steico I-Joists system, really takes the hassle out of this stage of a build and is a cost-effective and efficient way to arrange supply of joists."