Institution news
I always wanted to be a soldier but by good fortune my recruiting sergeant guided me to the engineering side of the army and so I began my career as a vehicle mechanic specialising in armoured vehicles. For me it was a great career choices, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers serve with all elements of the Army so you can go from working on small generators in a large HQ one moment to operating right alongside the tanks and artillery systems of the forward troops the next.
As a newly qualified soldier and mechanic I received my first posting overseas to the small German town of Bad Fallingbostel where I joined my “fitter section” supporting a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks, a quick deployment to the Gulf as part of Operation Telic (Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War) followed, operating in the extreme heat and dusty conditions of Kuwait and Iraq. Further postings followed in Germany and the UK as well as numerous deployments and training exercises to Poland, Canada and Afghanistan.
As my career progressed, I was fortunate to be selected for an accelerated promotion and engineering course and during this I realised that I had an interest for engineering not just within my own particular vehicles background but also across the wider scope of engineering. I decided to join the IMechE on the completion of my HND and with a desire to develop further to IEng I took up an option of studying a top up engineering degree with the university of Staffordshire, I can’t say that distance learning is easy or that the back of an armoured vehicle whilst on exercise is the best place to study but the feeling of achievement at my graduation and successfully becoming an Incorporated Engineer was most certainly worth the effort.
I took the decision in 2017 to leave the army and with my family decided to make Germany our home. I now find myself very much at home with ISP Gmbh & Co.KG, a testing institute in northern Germany that runs engine, vehicle and laboratory tests on behalf of oil additive companies and vehicle OEMs. Primarily I work as the customer contact linking the fuel economy test team with a global customer base but I also take on some engineering work with vehicle fuel economy testing, for this the vehicles are run on vehicle dynamometers under specific test conditions against a given driving cycle, the engines carbon based emissions (hydrocarbons, CO and CO2) are measured enabling the fuel economy from the test to be calculated via what is known as the carbon balance method. By conducting several test runs on the same oil and then switching to a candidate oil it is then possible to compare results and report a fuel economy value for the candidate oil.
My role as the engineer revolves around ensuring the test is run correctly, monitoring the variation in between test runs and authorising oil changes before collating and investigating the data to produce a final report. The fuel economy test then forms part of a wider series of engine and laboratory tests (also conducted by ISP) required for OEM certification. With oil forming a major component of improving efficiency, emissions and the fuel economy of internal combustions it is a thoroughly interesting and varied place to work and completely in-keeping with my desire to develop further as an engineer.
Moving from the military to civilian employment was certainly a big step to take but my experiences working across the globe with a diverse group of people really helped and for me the great thing about the IMechE is the fact that we are an international group of people with a shared passion for engineering. In my spare time I volunteer with the IMechE Germany group as the Rhein-Ruhr and NRW regional representative, we have a very wide ranging group both geographically and technically with major companies such as Rolls Royce and Airbus as well as the Army’s REME units still stationed here. It’s great to be able to support this network and benefit from it for my own professional development, whilst also maintaining a professional link back to the UK.