Construction engineers are crawling over a mass of metal and machinery. But they are not building anything. Instead, they are dismantling yet another legacy of Teesside steelmaking.

The coil plate mill at Lackenby, once a productive plant, has come to symbolise the decline of British Steel.

Its successor, Anglo-Dutch steel conglomerate Corus, sacked 230 staff who ran the mill as part of 7,000 redundancies made in the UK and Holland in March 2001.

The coil plate mill is now being dismantled, ready for shipping to China. The world's most populous nation has an insatiable apetite for steel to feed its economic growth.

A couple of miles down the road, Ian Forman sits across the broad boardroom table animatedly gesturing at a projector screen.

A pipe-smoking Scotsman,his passion for steelmaking is evident.

"I would not like to use the word blackmail," he says, slightly affronted. "It is a reality of life."

He is responding to the suggestion that he is putting immense psychological pressure on a range of agencies and organisations working alongside Corus to find a future for steel making in the region.

His slideshow has just identified 16 million ways in which the Government, regional development agency One NorthEast and others could safeguard that future.

The slideshow illustrates how it will cost £16m to bring road, rail and port facilities up to the necessary standard to export Teesside steel to a global market.

"Everyone, the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry), the port, One NorthEast, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, Tees Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Press, and everyone else you can think of is saying, 'Steelmaking cannot die on Teesside and we will do everything we can to support it'.

"Well now is the time to do it," he says.

The obvious answer is to find the money to pay for the improvements. Yet this is not an answer in itself.

Corus' Teesside division, or Teesside Cast Products (TCP) as it is known, has identified three key variables that could make or break plans for it to compete on the world stage.

Infrastructure is one, but international steel prices and cost reductions will also have a bearing.

On the issue of cost, TCP has already found half of the reductions needed and has identified the other half. The director says: "We are depending on suppliers to do it. They are not going to volunteer to reduce prices for us."

This is because suppliers have already been squeezed on price to the brink of extinction.

The price of steel is a different matter altogether, and one which TCP has no way of influencing.

Mr Forman explains: "The average slab selling price is $220 a tonne at the moment. The variable is that if the price is $5 out, we are $17.5m out in a year."

That figure is echoed in discussions about infrastructure. "Roughly 3.5 million tonnes (of steel) needs to get off the Tees. If it cannot go off the Tees and we have to transport it by rail to another place, it will cost us an extra five or so pounds per tonne.

"The developments in the Tees Port area are critical. They are also critical to Teesside itself because of high unemployment. As well as helping us, it would also be good for the area, good for industry, the environment and infrastructure."

A range of measures are being pursued to cut as many variables out as possible.

Long-term slab supply contracts are being sought to stabilise selling prices, cost reductions are being firmed up and other savings are being found such as using recycled fuel and working with nearby petrochemical companies. Efforts are also being made to find a commitment to port developments. "Regional grants are quite important to that," he says.

While everything is being done locally to ensure a safer future, the world market also appears to be doing its best to help. Mr Forman says that expectations are that demand for steel will grow from the current 25 million tonnes a year to 40 million. This prediction comes at a time when some of TCP's future competitors are scaling back operations.

CST in Brazil is getting out of the semis market to feed a mill it has just built - the world's biggest. This will leave a 3.5 million tonne hole in the international slabs market.

Fellow South American firm Imexa is reportedly consolidating its position because it cannot make money.

Futher north, US firm AK Steel has said it is considering halting its integrated steelmaking while keeping its mills working. That could open up six million tonnes of extra demand, though observers say this is bluff and bravado to put pressure on unions and the US government.

But for Corus, there is a symbolically important contract waiting much closer to home.

Corus UK's decision to phase out Teesside steel from the internal supply chain left the group's Scunthorpe plant to ferry raw materials more than 100 miles to a beam mill three miles from the Redcar blast furnace.

A more illogical proposal has yet to be seen.

Despite this, Mr Forman has accepted the reality that, under present plans, the Teesside beam mill will not be served by Teesside steel. But he has not given up hope.

"Assuming we can become the international force they want, people will look at the icing on the cake as supplying the beam mill."

More proactively, TCP is still searching for a partner, and Mr Forman says that one of the world's biggest ore suppliers, one of the world's biggest slab makers, and one of the world's biggest slab consumers are all showing an interest.

TCP is concentrating its efforts in the meantime on producing a business plan for the UK board. It has worked closely with the unions, a remarkable first, to discuss potential cost savings which could include the end of blooms - smaller, more specialist slabs than semis - at the cost of 60 to 70 jobs. The unions say everything will be done to help those affected.

Despite this, Mr Forman remains positive.

He says: "As long as we supply Corus mills we are tied to their success. They are out there in a difficult world playing against the big boys as well.

"This has opened for us a whole range of opportunities to do things, to distance ourselves from some things Corus faces and be much more masters of our own future."

He has to be positive, for himself and for the sake of his workforce. Although he is a realist and knows what the consequences of failure could be.

"If we cannot achieve acceptable financial performance then there must be doubts over our ongoing future."

His passion for the task at hand, his belief in the potential for success, and his rapport with the unions all give cause for optimism.

But it will take more than this to ensure the next legacy of steel making to be dismantled by the construction engineers is not the entire Teesside works.