Archie Bethel claims to have the best job in engineering – and it’s hard to disagree with him. As chief executive at Babcock’s marine division, Bethel gets to oversee an army of engineers who are involved with the design, build and maintenance of warships and submarines. Such a diverse programme of work provides plenty of technical challenges, but Bethel approaches it with a boundless sense of enthusiasm.
“I love it,” he says. “For a mechanical engineer, what else could be more challenging and exciting than working on warships, submarines and aircraft carriers. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. It doesn’t get much better. In this sector, I cannot think of another job I’d rather have.”
Bethel’s current sense of fulfilment can be explained, at least in part, by the transformation that Babcock’s marine business has enjoyed during his seven-year tenure. When he joined, Babcock’s marine activities were restricted to the ownership of the Rosyth dockyard on the Firth of Forth, which was being used primarily for refit of warships. A decision was taken to aggressively expand the business and Babcock began that process by winning a 10-year contract from the government for the management of the Faslane naval base on the Clyde, where Britain’s fleet of submarines is based. Acquisition of two specialised engineering services firms, Alstec and Strachan & Henshaw, quickly followed, before the final piece of the jigsaw was put in place with the buyout of Devonport Royal Dockyard in Plymouth, where warships are refitted and submarines are refitted, refuelled and decommissioned. As a result of this acquisitive process, Bethel oversaw the rapid expansion of Babcock’s marine division.
“We now employ 9,000 people,” says Bethel. “The business is split into three major parts – submarines, warships and naval bases. It’s a healthy balance that gives us plenty of opportunity for future growth.”
The challenge, then, is to continue growing at a time when defence budgets are shrinking. Bethel admits that, in the UK, Babcock doesn’t have much room to manoeuvre – its market share for the provision of engineering services to the Ministry of Defence for submarines and surface ships is as high as it is likely to go. This means that it is increasingly looking to international markets for further expansion.
That business model has already been adopted in Canada, where Babcock has won a 15-year contract to maintain four Victoria class submarines. The work means that 120 Babcock engineers are now seconded to Canada, providing in-service support in areas such as project management, data and configuration management, systems engineering, material and supply chain management, and waterfront activities.
“There are lots of opportunities for submarine support overseas,” says Bethel. “Many more countries than I ever thought have submarines but they don’t know what to do with them. They buy them but they don’t work out how they are going to keep them at sea. They think they are like normal ships – and then when they get them they end up sitting tied up alongside docks. So what we are saying is, let us show you how to support these vessels, so that when you have bought them you can keep them at sea.”
Babcock has developed a sophisticated management model that enables its engineers to accurately predict what work a submarine will require once it comes into dock.
This involves a prior assessment of the condition of the major on-board systems, and keeping track of the activities performed at sea. So, when the submarine comes in for refit, Babcock has a better idea of what work needs to be carried out.
Bethel says: “We’ve started to predict what we think needs to be done to the submarines long before they come in. The name of the game is to get more availability out of assets. That’s what we sold to the Canadians on the Victoria class. We’ve got the first refit under way and it’s working really well, and similar activities are taking place in Australia where they have struggled with submarine availability since the 1990s.”
Closer to home, work is progressing on major contracts within Babcock facilities across the UK. At Rosyth, it is the construction of the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers that keeps hands and minds busy. Rosyth has undergone major infrastructure upgrades such as dock strengthening in preparation for the build activities, and early next year a 1,000-tonne crane will be erected to enable the major blocks to be moved into place. Bethel says that talk ahead of the Strategic Defence and Security Review in October of the carrier contract being cancelled had unsettled the workforce, but since it had been given the go-ahead the mood had lightened considerably.
“The build-up to the defence review was tough for the team,” he says. “What we tried to do was keep everyone focused on the job and to forget about all the speculation. Now there is clarity. People feel, this time, that’s it, we can get it finished. Although, saying that, even when the carriers are sailing out of Rosyth there will still be people asking whether we should have them.”
Meanwhile, the signing earlier this year of a 15-year terms of business agreement with the MoD meant that the Devonport Royal Dockyard was given long-term guarantees over future work-flows for deep maintenance of the Royal Navy’s major warships and nuclear-powered submarines. The agreement gives Babcock the confidence to make multi-million pound infrastructure upgrades.
“The Ministry of Defence wanted us to invest in facilities and people, and we needed some sign that things were not going to change,” says Bethel. “The MoD has shared its vision of the fleet with us and in return we have tailored our support to meet those needs. Fifteen years is a long-term horizon to allow us to make big investments.”
Long-term visibility also gives Babcock the confidence to restructure its business. At present it has lots of duplicate facilities spread across the UK. It has, for instance, periscope work-shops in Faslane and Devonport. Bethel plans to streamline activities by turning each of its major facilities into a centre of specialisation. Devonport will become the centre for deep maintenance, carrying out bigger, more complicated engineering support packages for submarines and ships. Faslane will become the centre for specialisation for submarine operations, rather than refits.
“That’s the next big stage – we will shrink footprints in some places and create new investment in others,” he says.
‘Once an engineer, always an engineer’
Archie Bethel graduated as a mechanical engineer from Strathclyde University in 1975. Back in those days, the oil and gas sector was booming. So Bethel quickly found employment with US firm Vetco Gray and embarked on an 18-year stint, firstly
as a design engineer and then as a subsea engineer. The work took him all over the world. “It was a really good place to learn about engineering,” he says.
Eventually, the travel took its toll, and Bethel decided to put down some roots. He took a job with the public sector at Scottish Enterprise and was charged with the difficult job of overseeing the orderly withdrawal of some of the country’s big steel manufacturers. That role lasted five years and Bethel says it gave him valuable insight into how the public sector worked. “I learnt a lot about things like budgeting, approvals processes and working with politicians. It was a fantastic role, one of the best times of my career. And when I finished I was awarded an OBE.”
Next up was the chief operating officer’s role at Motherwell Bridge, the historic heavy engineering firm that made equipment such as pressure vessels and cryogenic tanks. Bethel was instrumental in helping the company to diversify from being a manufacturer into an engineering services provider. Motherwell Bridge was to be Bethel’s stepping stone to Babcock.
Looking back at his career, Bethel has no regrets about moving away from hands-on day-to-day engineering towards more management-focused roles. “It’s been a long time since I was a working engineer, but the guys at Babcock still get annoyed because I’m always telling them how to do things. Once an engineer, always an engineer,” he says.
“The move from hands-on engineering to engineering management just kind of happened – it wasn’t even a deliberate decision. I did go back to university in 1987 to do an MBA, so I suppose the interest in management was always there.”
But he reckons his time as an engineer stood him in good stead for the job he does today. He says: “I think my background has given me a better understanding of technical issues – engineering is a great place to start a management career. I have known lots of engineers who have gone on to become accountants or lawyers,
but I’ve never met an accountant who’s managed to become an engineer. So it’s a good background to do other things. It gives you good discipline and a systematic approach.”