I did my undergraduate at University College, University of Durham, gaining an MEng in Mechanical Engineering in 1999. I followed this with a PhD at Cambridge, Jesus College and the Whittle Laboratory. My thesis was 'Shroud Leakage in High Pressure Turbines' and concerned the effect of cavities before and after the rotor and how to mitigate the effects of both the cavities and the inevitable flow through the seals. Result: patent #1. This was for a non-contacting seal that could totally exclude hot gas from above the blade shroud, using a radically reduced gas flow to do so. Net result: better cooling of that part of the engine, improved main flow aerodynamics and more power from the engine.  Sadly, despite more research being done on the concept it was not ultimately adopted commercially. 

 

On graduating I flirted with the idea of going into the City and, probably as well for my sanity, if not my bank balance, didn't and started my career in blue skies research and development with Dyson. 

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After two years with them I left and joined the oilfield services giant Schlumberger, developing a variety of downhole drilling tools and associated technology. The following eight years gained me more patents, though some of the best stuff is still lurking in a vault somewhere... 

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Then one day I got a call from a Scottish gentleman asking if I had ever thought about trains. Truthful answer: only in terms of The Mallard and Thomas The Tank Engine. He persuaded me over a beer to think again and I joined a startup called Perpetuum which was trying to change the way that the rail business did its maintenance.

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One of the key limitations for a small company is the cost and availability of good people. You have to maximise what you have. It was during the very early days at Perpetuum that I had to automate the calculations used to gain approval to fit our equipment to trains. These had been sent out to a contractor. This was expensive and took far too long. Initially I used a very complicated Excel sheet linked to a Word template to perform the calculations and generate the reports. This worked but it was limited in many ways. So I turned to using ABAQUS and automated the whole design process, from concept to final FEA models and all the reports for any configuration of our products.

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After six years of growing success and great fun, building a great team of people and new technology we were acquired during the depths of the pandemic by Hitachi Rail.

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The Perpetuum products and services have gone on from strength to strength under the new owners and I am still involved in developing a wide variety of new hardware for the business. The value of scripting for productivity continues to be recognised within the business.