Institution member wins Engineer of the Year Award at UK Bus Awards

Institution Automobile Committee Board member John Bickerton has been rewarded for his hard work by picking up a top award.

John Bickerton MEng(Hons) CEng MIMechE won the prestigious Engineer of the Year title at the UK Bus Awards in London. The award is open to anyone in the bus industry employed at, or above, the supervisory grade in the engineering function of bus operating, maintenance or manufacturing.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers member is the Technical Standards Manager for First’s UK Bus division and this award has recognised his work delivering significant and complex projects. These include First’s award winning DriveGreen programme which has seen fuel savings of around 4.9% a year achieved along with a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions to the tune of 23,000 tonnes.

John stated what it meant to him to pick up the award: “This is a great recognition of my work to date and I'm humbled to have been selected. The bus industry isn't traditionally an aspiriational option for engineering graduates in the same way that say motorsport is. Hopefully this award has helped to promote a wider range of destinations, and particularly First, to for engineering graduates.”

The 30-year-old went onto explain a little more about the work that went into achieving this award: “The award itself had an application process, a presentation and an interview stage - but the work to support that was much wider. My last three years have been dominated by the selection, trial and rollout of a driver information system to improve our safety and fuel efficiency under our ‘DriveGreen’ banner. This wasn't just 9,000 vehicle installations and a poster campaign - we had to win the hearts and minds of our driving staff to ensure they were 'bought in' to improving efficiency. It's relatively easy to improve a typical driver's performance by 25% over a single journey - but we achieved a sustained saving of nearly 5% across more than 20,000 drivers- and learned a great deal along the way.”

Notably as well as working full-time John sits on the Institution’s Automobile Board and also chairs the Institution’s Automobile Division (Western) centre committee. This brings together academics from the University of Bath and the University of the West of England with professionals from VOSA (Vehicle and Operator Services Agency), Vehicle Certification Agency and other automotive businesses in the south-west.

John explained a little more about his work on the two committees: “The Automobile Division centre committees around the country each run a programme of free lectures for members and non-members. I've been lucky enough to work with my enthusiastic colleagues in the South West to snare some really good lectures and speakers from leading auto companies. For example, we kicked off our 2011/12 season with Geoff Grose, Head of Vehicle Development for the McLaren MP4-12C. He brought one of their production cars to Bristol and showed us the meticulous and clinical way that McLaren have designed and planned the manufacture of their new car, which really appeals to the audience.”

Chris Brace current Vice Chair of the Automobile Division and a former Chair of the Western centre Committee commented on the work which John undertakes: “I have known John since he was an undergraduate at Bath. It was clear then that he had a rare enthusiasm for engineering and his early career at First added valuable experience of management to his portfolio and undoubtedly helped him develop as an engineer. John’s work in the bus industry has a real impact on both the business and the wider community through the programme of fuel saving initiatives he has pushed forward.”

Chris also stated how he felt John was a worthy winner of the award: “John is passionate about the need to enthuse young engineers and helps bring this about with his energetic chairmanship. This award is fully deserved and I’m really pleased for him.”

On top of this John has somehow regularly managed to fit in a number of hours voluntary work throughout the UK, seeing him spend time on the STEM Ambassador programme. This sees him work with students in schools to promote science, technology, engineering and maths in schools, and showing the importance of these subjects and how they're used in the outside world.