How we are governed

Pete graduated from Heriot-Watt University in 1987 with a Honours Degree in Mechanical Engineering and with a Masters Degree in Nuclear Science and Technology in 1998 from the Royal Naval College at Greenwich.  From 1987 to 2001 he served as an Engineering Officer in the Submarine Service of the Royal Navy.  Following his time in the Royal Navy Pete embarked on a career as an Engineering Consultant specialising in Nuclear Engineering and Nuclear Safety Assurance.  His consultancy career includes management positions with Babtie, Jacobs Engineering, ABS Consulting, Hydrock NMCL and currently AtkinsRealis.  In these international organisations he has been responsible for business development, recruitment and programme delivery across the civil and defence nuclear industry along with other high hazard and regulated industries in the UK.

Pete is a Fellow of the Institution and a longstanding Board Member and past Chair of the Safety & Reliability Group. More recently he has taken on the role of Trustee at the Hazards Forum on behalf of the IMechE.

Former H M Principal Specialist Inspector of Health and Safety (Mechanical Engineering) at Health and Safety Executive

Vaughan, over a period of twenty years, held senior mechanical engineering positions in Health and Safety Executive. He was a Petroleum Specialist in HSE, Offshore Division, a Principal Specialist Inspector in Railway Division and a Principal Specialist Inspector in Field Operations Division. Vaughan has assessed safety reports or safety cases in all three Divisions for offshore, rail and COMAH activities.

Prior to joining HSE, he was employed by CEGB for ten years in the assessment of nuclear safety reports or cases. Vaughan’s earlier responsibilities, with British Rail, related to all aspects of railway mechanical and electrical engineering and with BOC, low temperature development projects. In addition, with CEGB, he was employed on coal and oil fired power stations and was responsible for conventional plant quality and timely delivery at contractors works.

Dependability Specialist Fellow - Ministry of Defence

Richard has spent the last 30 years working to improve Reliability, Maintainability and Supportability across numerous projects spread across all areas of defence. Outside of the “day job” he has also been a Member of the Council of the Safety and Reliability Society (SaRS) for over 25 years taking various including 9 years as President of the society. He has supported the British Standards Committee for Dependability (DS/1) since 2002, is currently Chair and also worked with International Electrotechnical Commission – Technical Committee 56 (Dependability) developing international standards – most recently he has been Head of the UK Delegation to TC56. He has been the liaison between IMechE SRG and SaRS for 20 years.

Across his roles he has produced numerous papers on various aspects of Defence Reliability and has a particular interested in modelling the Reliability characteristics of complex multi-function platforms and the use of the Dependability Case as a tool to ensure Dependability of assets.

Christopher is a master's student in Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London. He holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Birmingham, where he received the Joseph Thom Carding Memorial Prize for excellence. During his time at ROSEN, he developed asset management solutions for C-suite clients in the energy sector. He has a keen interest in emerging technologies, such as quantum systems and their reliability, and presented a poster at Imperial’s Quantum for Humanity conference in August 2024, engaging in discussions on the future applications of quantum engineering.

He currently serves as the Young Member Representative for the Safety and Reliability Group at the IMechE, ensuring that the perspectives of young engineers are considered in the group's initiatives. In this role, he collaborates with other Young Member boards and panels to promote engagement and knowledge sharing within the engineering community.

Melissa is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer and qualified in Human Factors and Ergonomics with a deep-rooted passion for human-centred design. 

After completing MEng in Mechanical Engineering at University of Birmingham (1st), she began her career in automotive design and manufacturing, where she developed a strong foundation in engineering principles. Driven by a desire to better understand and influence the optimisation of human-system interaction, she transitioned into the field of Human Factors and Ergonomics.

Her journey into this discipline began with roles in the NHS and healthcare product design, followed by a learning sabbatical to complete an MSc in Human Factors & Ergonomics at Loughborough University. She then applied her expertise in high-risk, safety critical sectors—first as a Human Factors Specialist at SGN, a gas utilities company, and later as a consultant at AtkinsRéalis, supporting Defence and Security projects.

Melissa recently returned to Jaguar Land Rover, bringing her HF expertise back to the automotive world with a renewed focus: ensuring that tools, tasks, and workflows are designed to fit people—not the other way around.

She is board member of the SRG and member of WG4 with a desire to champion the early integration of Human Factors and Ergonomics across engineering disciplines. She hopes, through collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, that the SRG will expand awareness, improve resources, and ensure engineers are effectively supported in accessing the tools and insights they need.

Her particular interests include digital human modelling and human-based risk assessment tools, which she sees as powerful enablers of early, proactive risk mitigation in complex systems.

Kevin is Chair of the IMechE’s Engineering for Reliability Work Group and Network Rail’s Subject Matter Exert in Design For Reliability. He is an IMechE Fellow who gained his passion for continuous improvement at Ford Motor Company, where he was Quality Supervisor for Dagenham Body and Assembly Plant. His MSc in Advanced Automotive Engineering gained him a patent for an intelligent system which identified squeak and rattle issues using frequency finger-printing in 1996.

As part of Ford’s world class Engineering Quality Improvement Programme, he trained and supported engineers and managers in Total Quality Management tools such as Statistical Process Control, Design of Experiments, Potential Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, Problem Solving, Quality Function Deployment and Robustness. This allowed him to build an extensive portfolio of successful projects, including winning Ford’s prestigious President’s Customer Driven Quality Award twice. Kevin was on the first waves of Ford’s Six Sigma Black Belt and Master Black Belt training and then headed up and deployed Six Sigma into foundries, V-Engine plants, Automatic Transmission Design and Diesel Engineering.

After spending time as the Quality and Reliability Supervisor for European Diesel Engines fitted into Jaguar vehicles, Kevin joined Network Rail to deliver their Maintenance Six Sigma Programme leading to very significant signed-off savings. A role as Reliability Improvement Manager for Signalling, led him to identify the need, write and gain stakeholder approval for Network Rail’s mandated Design for Reliability Standard, integrating reliability tools into the design process. He has briefed and taught this to Network Rail, suppliers and European Infrastructure Management companies. Kevin received a Network Rail Technical Fellowships, for experience and knowledge in the fields of quality and reliability. He won Kepner Tregoe’s combined technologies 2022 Global Excellence Award for his work on Design For Reliability and recognised at the 2022 National Rail Awards for his Outstanding Personal Contribution to Rail. Kevin has written a regular article on reliability for ‘Rail Infrastructure Magazine’ since July 2022.