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06/04/2010
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Paul Fanning speaks with Andrew Breeze, mechanical design engineer, Tracerco
 Q: How did you first get into the engineering industry?
A: I just liked tinkering at first. I was always a hands-on, practical sort of a lad. I started off as a mechanical draughtsperson doing an apprenticeship when I was 16-17 and then through that just moved up the ranks and eventually went into mechanical engineering itself.
Q: What does your role with Tracerco involve on a day-to-day basis?
A: It's the mechanical design of instrumentation equipment. Basically it's instrumentation whereby we use electronics and radiation and put them inside of dip pipes for want of a better term and I do the mechanical work in and around that. I've been here probably just gone eight years.
Q: What are some of the projects that you are currently working on?
A: I'm not really at liberty to say, I'm afraid, but it's all predominantly for the oil and gas industry.
Q: What is the most interesting project or piece of engineering that you've been involved in?
A: I used to do quite a lot for the steel industry in days gone by. It's probably not the most technically complicated, but water cooling systems for the steel industry was always a bit of a challenge, especially when you were seeing a design all the way through from the design through to the actual plant shutdown installation works
It was good to see everything from every angle. From the operator's angle right the way through to seeing design go in, seeing what problems might have occurred or what you could have avoided and applying that to future learning.
Q: Has the industry changed a great deal since you joined?
A: It's become a lot more red tape these days in a nutshell. Whereas you could just get on with your engineering in days gone by, there's a lot more paperwork and documentation these days. All provoked by insurance and covering oneself, shall we say?
It can be a little frustrating. It can sometimes put you off putting a design forward just because you know the knock-on implications in terms of red tape and paperwork that it might have. And so you'll sometimes make something simpler – albeit simple ideas tend to be the best ones – but you might simplify something in a bad way from an engineering stance in order to fulfil requirements from a hassle-free and political standpoint.
Q: What are the big issues facing your industry?
A: Within the UK it's shortage of engineers right across the field: every discipline; young and old. People are retiring and not enough new faces are coming into the industry.
I've seen it happening over the last 10-15 years and it's obviously becoming worse these days. And the people you do have left…well you're not spoiled for choice, to put it politely.
Some of them aren't as dedicated as they might have been in days gone by. If you haven't got so much competition, you can get away with being a bit more lackadaisical, whereas if you've got competition for a job, you've got to be a lot more alert and switched on.
Q: How do you see the industry going forward?
A: If we keep muddling along at this rate, more work will go abroad as they've got cheaper labour from design all the way to shopfloor. More work will go abroad as they pinch our ideas and use them to build their own economy. So in the short term, the work will disappear. Now whether the quality will disappear with it is another matter. But I do believe a lot more work will disappear overseas.
Q: What still excites you about engineering?
A: The challenge. Some of the work you do day to day can be a bit repetitive, but when you do get that odd challenge that stimulates the old grey matter and come up with a solution, that floats my boat.
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Author
Paul Fanning
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