About James Fisher Strainstall
James Fisher Strainstall (JF Strainstall) is a world leader in the development of innovative monitoring solutions to enhance the safety and performance of your assets.
Drawing on more than 50 years’ experience, we develop and apply our innovative technology, including load, strain and stress measuring techniques, within a wide range of sectors including marine, offshore, civil engineering, rail and aerospace.
- In 2016 JF Strainstall celebrated 50 years at the forefront of developing innovative monitoring solutions for its customers
We specialise in the design and manufacture of standard and bespoke load cells, strain gauges and integrated systems which are proven to perform year on year in hostile and hazardous environments.
Whether a project is large or small, we provide a range of services including hull stress monitoring, crane weighing and overload, tendon and riser tension monitoring in TLPs.
Our instrumentation and software systems capture and analyse data on parameters such as strain, displacement, inclination, temperature, vibration and water levels to provide asset owners and operators with a comprehensive and real-time overview of events to realise optimum performance.
JF Strainstall has been part of James Fisher and Sons plc since 2006. James Fisher is a leading provider of specialist services to the marine, oil and gas and other high assurance industries worldwide.
See our journey so far in our JF Strainstall heritage timeline
James Fisher Strainstall company history
1952
The bonded foil strain gauge was invented at Saunders Roe on the Isle of Wight by Peter Scott-Jackson. Peter was a member of Saunders Roe’s Strain Gauge Division’ where he was joined by Chief Engineer and founder of JF Strainstall Frank Hartshorne.
1966
Keen to further commercialise the technology, Frank Hartshorne, Bob Eldridge, and Archie Court founded Strainstall in Cowes, Isle of Wight. It was here that the company would pioneer the use of the bonded foil strain gauge in load cells for high-assurance industries worldwide.
1967
JF Strainstall designs and installs structural monitoring equipment on the first UK nuclear power station to use a pre-stressed concrete pressure vessel at Oldbury.
1973
JF Strainstall develops the first intrinsically safe hazardous area strain gauge amplifier to meet the safety demands of oil and gas operations in the North Sea.
1982
JF Strainstall supplies hazardous area load monitoring equipment for the UK’s National Coal Board. The equipment is specifically designed to operate safely in the potentially explosive and dusty atmosphere of coal mines. To this day, the company continues to supply specialised load cells for long wall mining applications.
1987
JF Strainstall’s load cells support Richard Branson as he flies across the Atlantic in a hot air balloon.
1988
JF Strainstall delivers load monitoring technology for the world’s largest ship lifting system at Devonshire Dock Hall, helping to safely lift Trident submarines.
1991
JF Strainstall develops its patented strain ring surface strain measurement device. The strain ring was initially developed for a Ministry of Defence contract to monitor load and fatigue damage in rapid deployable military bridges.
1994
JF Strainstall launches its StressAlert Hull Stress Monitoring System (HSMS). The system has been continually developed and updated over the years and has been installed on over 300 vessels since its launch.
1996
JF Strainstall first deploys its strain rings in offshore upstream operations. Since then, this technology has been widely used in the oil and gas sector.
2002
JF Strainstall is awarded a landmark contract for the Abb Vetco tension leg platform in Exxon’s Kizomba oil field – off the coast of Angola.
2005
We installed our structural monitoring system for the world's tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai
2006
James Fisher and Sons plc (JFS) acquires JF Strainstall. This combines JF Strainstall’s specialist load monitoring experience with JFS’s global capability and depth of expertise.
2010
JF Strainstall installed an advanced structural monitoring and data management solution for a major fixed-bottom offshore wind farm in Europe. Since then, the company has been contracted to install its structural monitoring system for over 170 assets in the global offshore wind sector
2015
JF Strainstall launch its Container Weight System (CWS), which was quickly adopted by ports around the world to answer the industry’s SOLAS safety regulations.
2017
JF Strainstall makes a splash in the offshore renewables sector. The load monitoring specialists support the world’s first floating offshore wind farm, Hywind, as well as Sustainable Marine’s landmark PLAT-I tidal energy platform.
2018
JF Strainstall continues to drive the renewables sector’s sustainable development by supplying load monitoring equipment to support the world's largest floating offshore wind farm.
2019
We delivered structural health monitoring for the Queensferry Crossing bridge - one of Europe's largest and most prestigious recent infrastructure projects.
Coming soon
JF Strainstall has a host of exciting new technologies and projects in the pipeline.
