Articles
If it was up to me I’d have done art.
Art was my favourite subject at school, it was where I felt I could express my creativity. But my parents wanted me to follow a path that led to a “proper job”, one that offered security like engineering, law, accountancy or medicine. Being creative and a bit of a tinkerer, engineering was the one that piqued my curiosity the most. I went to the University of Nottingham but, looking back, I didn’t embrace my MEng degree as much as I could have. My aim was to do enough to pass with a 2:1 as I was more interested in things like basketball.
Following graduation I worked in a metal casting foundry for a few months before realising that I actually wanted to further my studies in industrial design engineering.
Discovering that the Royal College of Art (RCA) offered a two-year masters in innovation design and engineering, I went along to its open day. I was so overwhelmed by the projects and how passionately the students spoke about how their projects could make a real impact in the world that I had to leave and sit outside. I put a portfolio together and applied for the course.
It was only then that engineering came to life for me.
I realised through that course that engineering is a practical tool that can make a real impact, and that mantra has stayed with me throughout my career. For instance, in our RCA group project our aim was to make a difference in an emergency situation by creating an innovative fire-safety product. Having spoken to local firefighters, I learned about an underused way of addressing dangerous fires using water mist. And so we designed an automatic sprinkler alternative system, called Automist, which was easier to install and could be more effective than the traditional solutions for various fire types.
Relentless iteration and testing is what it took to get Automist to market.
I believe that you learn from doing things and more so you learn from failure. It’s more valuable to have someone criticise your design solution than having them praise you. It’s the best way to understand your design and then try and try again. Finding opportunities for that to happen is fundamental to accelerating a product’s development process.
To have a slam dunk of a product is not just about the design, it’s about communicating why and how your product is better than other products out there.
You’d think that if you came up with a better solution people would just automatically get it and so would want to purchase it. But I’ve had to learn that to get people to embrace what you’re doing you need to slowly but surely produce evidence and convince them of your idea. Overnight success is rare. Most of the time it is a long ride that involves many moving parts and having to learn how to navigate them.
I’m a huge advocate of engineering, although it did take me a second masters degree to fully appreciate it.
Engineering gives you the power to change things around you and in your environment. People rarely appreciate that a lot of what surrounds us was considered and deliberately made by an engineer. Whether it’s the chair you’re sitting on or the screen in front of you – an engineer has made conscious decisions that have meant you have ended up with what you’ve got. This means engineers also have the tools to completely change any of those elements too. With our Automist product we started out with a mission on a piece of paper that we wanted to reduce the number of deaths and injuries from fire. Ten years later there are at least six people we know of who have survived from a fire as a result of our product. Equally, when I was working as one of the inventors on the BBC’s The Big Life Fix with Simon Reeve we were able to create a product or a ‘fix’ that could help an individual achieve a specific goal. With engineering we could make a huge impact on their lives. So, I absolutely believe engineering has the power to change our world for the better.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.