15 years an Engineer
My names Greg and I’ve been on LinkedIn for a while, so I thought I’d better post something about myself.
Ive grown up on my family’s farm on the Herefordshire/Worcestershire borders. From the age of 8 upwards I have taken an active role in various farming tasks and developed a particular passion for all things mechanical. From the age of 13 I worked part time for a variety local engineering companies to give myself an introduction to various sectors of engineering. At the age of 16 I began a 5 year technical apprenticeship in mechanical and production engineering.
Due to the depressed nature of engineering in the early 2000’s, I completed my apprenticeship with 3 different employers with my final year being in self-employment.
During this time I worked for companies with less than 5 employees and one company with over 400 employees. This taught me a great deal about how business’s worked and types of problems that this can lead to on the shop floor. For example smaller business can often be under equipped and often can’t afford a back-up option. Larger companies tend to take longer making decisions and often have political issues. Coming from a family run farm I was familiar with both.
Personally I have always found the challenges faced by small business more enjoyable and rewarding as the problems are usually real and can be got on with. Bigger companies challenges tend to revolve around politics and are often un-resolvable.
Experience
I completed the first year of my apprenticeship on a full time college course at the Chamber of Commerce training centre in Worcester, which was formally the Heenan and Froude training centre. Heenan and Froude were dynamometer makers in Worcester and are now known as Froude Consign. The training centre was where B & M bargains and Asda now are in Worcester. My year group were the final trainees to pass through the centre before it was shut down at the end of the 2001/2002 academic year.
Aspiring to one day own my own business, I managed to find out who was in charge of disposing of the equipment and made an offer on some of the pieces. 3 months later and having forgotten all about it, I was suppressed to receive a phone call saying that my offer had been accepted, but I only had 2 weeks to shift evening. I cheekily asked them if as a former trainee, I could be entrusted with the keys so that I could go there during the evenings and weekends as I was already working 80 hours a week. To my surprise they agreed and I prepared my new (to me) machines and accessories to be moved in one big day by a lorry that I had hired in for the day. This one big day caused me problems in trying to explain why I needed the day off work in mid January, I couldn’t tell my boss that I was going to collect a load of machine tools that I had brought as he would have seen this as a threat to his business. I needn’t have worried as the company went into receivership the following Monday.
So here I am at just before 6 on a cold dark January Monday morning aged 17 and a half and exhausted from the weekend of moving machines , standing outside my place of employment which has just gone into receivership. Inside are my tool boxes containing my hand tools and measuring equipment, much of which I had made myself and was irreplaceable.
My savings, having not long passed my driving test, brought and insured my 1st car and having splashed out in the region of ￡2000 on workshop equipment were non-existent. The word gutted didn’t really seem strong enough.
For some reason I had a local newspaper with me, which was unusual as I rarely read them. Looking through the jobs section I found an advert for a non-descript job with a non-descript company on the next trading estate. They were based just behind one of our then major customers. Arriving at about 7, I had time to kill, but I wasnt sure what time they started. Our former customers machine shop overlooked the entrance to my prospective employers and I knew machinist well as he was my instructor from the previous year. He invited me to sneak in through the window which over looked me new employers and we drank a few coffees together until 9 o clock arrived and I snuck back out of the window.
I met the company’s owners at the door as they arrived, I explained my position and they said they were similarly up the creak without a paddle. They told me to have a go and see how I got on, but I would have to figure everything out myself as there was no one to train me. Their factory was in chaos, the paperwork reviled they were around 3 months behind with orders, but had continued buying in the materials which had by now had buried most of the factories equipment.
At this point I was just tempted walk out and go and play with my new machine tools, but on my way out I found a space heater and gas cylinders. So I reconsidered my decision on the basis that at least I would be warm if I stayed, my workshop at this time had no heating and that remained one of those jobs that I never got round to. Any way I spent that day clearing up and to my surprise I found another 3 machines worth around ￡5000 each.
By now I had figured out that the company made vertical blind louvers, if you see any with glued seems, they probably came from us or were made by one of our machines. Our company also imported these machines from Australia and was also responsible for the maintenance of the 300 or so machines already imported into the UK.
For my first month I worked 16 hours a day for 6 days a week running all 3 machines at the same time. By this stage I had brought our backlog under control. At about this time I discovered that the company went out for a pub lunch once a month, at 17 and a half pubs and beer still had novelty value. I always felt this was a nice touch as it gave us time to chat and have some banter away from the commercial pressures of work and is something I’ve missed ever since.
In my second month it was announced that my predecessor was to return, he had a long history of mental breakdowns. Although I was dubious, I had the good fortune to keep these thoughts to myself. He actually turned out be very good at keeping things in order and running to time, he only fell apart when he lost control. With me on hand to put things back in order we worked well together and became good friends.
With much of my workload being carried by someone else, I turned my attention to organising our parts supply, maintenance and parts reconditioning which was in similar chaos. Most of this was straight forward mechanical engineering operations of cleaning, sharpening and replacing worn out parts. I instigated an established Aviation policy of proving Quick Change Assemblies (QCA). At this time it was relatively unheard of outside of aviation. Under this scheme customers could have their machines back in action with 24 hours of a breakdown regardless of where they are in the country. Mostly they fitted the assemblies themselves, a bit like changing a wheel on a car. Much of the sharpening was done by me at my workshop. This was the beginning of GD Engineering Services
The company’s owners were fairly laid back and for the most part it worked well as we could just get on with our work. On example was when I turned up on the morning of my 18th birthday and being startled by my boss appearing from behind some shelving and presenting me with a birthday card containing ￡20 and ordering me to turn up the following morning with red eyes and a hangover. At that time that was how I often turned up to work and turning 18 on the Tuesday after a bank holiday was certainly the case that day.
As the summer months of 2003 rolled by, I took one of the worst decisions of my life to leave this company and join a larger company thinking the grass would be greener. Before I left I secured a replacement for myself in the form of my old instructor who was now climbing the walls as store keeper for the company across the road. As it turned out the grass wasn’t greener, and I hated my two years with that company.
It was a similar feeling to blasting along the motorway at an un-disclosable speed and then being caught up in a traffic jam. Working for small companies I had got used to thinking for myself, I was used to instructions like “there’s our factory, get with your job”. With my new company my first week was taken up with something called induction. Two days of this was taken up with the firm’s health and safety manager rabbiting on incessantly about anything and everything. She had no practical experience so was essentially clueless on matters of safety; she was a big believer in the right sign making everything fine.
The company policies amounted to a series of petty acts of bureaucracy. For example one day a forklift had been parked in my way; I went through the proper procedure of finding the nominated fork lift driver and got it moved after 20 minutes. The next time it happened I just moved it myself, it took 10 seconds. Later on senior management wasted around 20 hours of time holding an inquiry as to how it moved before issuing me with a severe reprimand. The fact I hold a valid certificate to drive a forklift seemed irrelevant.
This sort of endless procrastination was pretty much the story of my two years with the company. During this time I had set up my machine tools to form my own workshop and having picked up around ￡25,000’s worth of machine tool accessories (new price) from the bankruptcy sale of my former employer, I was chomping at the bit and raring to go. My current employer had not long been taken over by General Electric and was looking to make people redundant; keen to leave I jumped at this opportunity.
2005, having just turned 20 and now redundant, I enthusiastically went steaming into my new business venture GD Engineering Services. At about this time MG Rover in nearby Birmingham had shut down, this time for good. MG Rover accounted for a great deal of the local engineering business, plus at 20 years old people weren’t taking me that seriously as either a competent engineer or a business person. Undeterred I carried on, but as my redundancy monies were dwindling I had thoughts like; with engineering business closing down or being mothballed it’s going to be difficult to get a job. Having had 3 employers in the last 4 years it’s going to be difficult. By that stage most of my potential employers knew me and knew what I was doing as I had approached for overflow work, so again it was going to be difficult.
Before those sorts of thoughts could become too deeply ingrained, I cold called on a company I hadn’t visited before. It was Friday lunchtime and this company had a deadline to meet on Monday morning. They had sub-contracted some parts of this job out and they had come back wrong. The company’s manager was going despair and when I offered to fix the defective parts he told me to get these parts out of his sight to save him the bother of binning them.
Monday morning arrived and expecting to get the roasting of his life the companies manager was met by me claiming to have fixed the defective parts over the weekend. His response was he didn’t believe a word I said, but knew he was going to get sacked if he didn’t take the chance. So we fitted my corrected parts which worked perfectly and the machine was up and running in time for the customer to collect. I have no idea to this day what the machine was for, but I was grateful for the opportunity to show what I could do.
That opening led to two years’ worth of business from that company. Over this time I specialised in doing what other people wouldn’t or couldn’t do and I developed a good reputation for doing this. My customers regarded me at their company’s lifesaver for being able to extract them from tight corners. By now, my former employer was now looking to part with his Australian supplier of blind making machinery. They wanted to have spare parts custom made for their machines and also wanted to investigate building our own version of the machine, as during my time with them I had frequently suggested and designed improvements for the machines.
This was late 2007 to early 2008 and the recession was kicking in, although no-one really had the guts to call it that and instead called it the credit crunch. People stopped buying new blinds and instead stuck with their old ones. Offices were not being built and refurbished at the same rate. Companies were shutting down left right and centre and those who survived did so by delaying payments for as long as possible and making that a part of their business plan. All of a sudden the business of engineering was not a nice place to be.
Feeling I had very little to lose; I figured that when people stop buying new demand for repairs and refurbishments must increase. So while stuck I traffic jam, I drafted my first sales campaign where I emphasized my skills in refurbishment and repairs on a shoestring budget. My colour printer inkjet printer had just died, leaving me with only a black and white laser and having recently invested in a CNC Milling Machine, no money to replace it with. So I designed my sales material around black and white printing. I embodied the policy of simple, stark and straight to the point and the customers liked this.
I found myself now refurbishing tooling and equipment that I had been involved in manufacturing up to 10 years earlier. Whilst this is the dog end of the business, it greatly expanded my working knowledge of engineering. It allowed me to see 1st hand how short cuts come back to bite and how relatively simple tricks can drastically improve service life of equipment.
By this stage I was suffering with the long term effects of a car accident some years earlier and I was also exhausted from working long hours 7 days a week without a break for nearly 10 years. So I mothballed the workshop, just as engineering was picking up in this country. Since this time I have taken some time out.
Taking some time out from time to time is a good thing, it allows time to think and for everything to catch up with its self. During this time I began to realise that whilst I enjoyed manufacturing I also needed to satisfy my creative side. I had always designed the bits and pieces that my machine shop work required, but had never designed commercially. In addition I have also liked the idea of being a retailer.
As I began to draw up plans to restart the business, I planed around being able to design as well as manufacture. This opens up far more opportunities as I can offer these services separately or together.
Knowing how to manufacture on a tight budget allows me to design that into a product from the 1st draft. Ultimately I can design your product around its need to function, look good and be cost effective in manufacture. Having designed a product, I can manufacture prototypes, set up a test program and then design/commission a dedicated production line to mass produce products cost effectively.
As an engineer there are various ways in which I can streamline production or put in place expansion plans should sales take off. I can suggest and implement improvements for existing systems or I can start from scratch and design something from the ground up. With a detailed hands on knowledge and skills base I can design things to be produced cost effectively at any scale. I have a practical can do attitude, but with a strong will not to cut corners. I enjoy making something from very little and enjoy using my skills previously learnt working a shoestring.
Having experienced and witnessed many failures and set backs, I am well placed to perform a critical review of your project. This give your a greater warning of potential problems and buys you more time to find a solution, reducing the potential delays caused by these surprises.
I have taken advantage of restarting GD Engineering Services to re-design the workshop around new premises with its own dedicated office suite, phone lines and internet connection. With everything now under one roof I can offer a more efficient service with far less wasted costs. With office and hospitality facilities I can now accommodate customer visits at my premises allowing the customer to have a greater hands on involvement.
Thanks for reading
Greg