EPC Congress 2016 Downs & Downs
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Our Father Daughter talk at the Engineering Professors' Council Congress 2016
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EPC Congress 2016 Downs & Downs
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Editor's Notes
- My name is David Downs currently Engineering Consultant at BAE Systems Naval Ships, but previously until a year ago Engineering Director of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance working on the project to design, build, test and commission two giant aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy. These two ships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales will be the largest ships ever to enter service with the RN. Charlotte is my daughter and she will introduce herself ….. As you can see my father set me up with some very big shoes to fill, I am a founder and managing director at Cinter. A business that I set up alongside my colleagues in the final few terms of our Masters’ degree, which nicely gave us a client pool to jump straight into. We specialise in taking products and services from early conception right through the development cycle to design for manufacture and have had the opportunity to do this for many reputable clients. In this presentation we will give you a personal view of the things that have inspired us in our careers and how we have got to where we are. I should note that when Charlotte joined me for a "take your children to work day" she concluded that my job was very dull. I'm not sure either of us know how we have ended up here!
- The theme of this conference is the Art of Engineering and so I think it is very appropriate that we should jointly address you as my background is very much in the analytical approach to engineering, using engineering to arrange, contrive, guide, manage and construct objects (in my case large objects which may not be considered a thing of beauty) whereas Charlotte has reached here through a more artistic background where she is first and foremost a designer. That being said as much as I have tried to steer away from the technical, my passions and practices have always led me back to the functional and the inquisition of how things work. Delving a little into the etymology of both terms it is perhaps clearer to see why there may be convergence. Using these terms as themes to guide you through our presentation.
- Where it all began…. we have looked back at key themes of our childhood that have helped us curate our own career paths and potentially those of the next generation.
- I was born and brought up in the suburbs of SE London about as far away from the sea and ships as you can imagine. There was no history of engineering, defence contracting etc. in my family and certainly no past history of anything to do with the navy. So how did I get from there to being the Engineering Director of the biggest Naval Engineering project ever undertaken in this country and arguably one of the biggest engineering projects in the country. I was good at maths and drawing at school and my teachers told me I might consider a career as an architect. So I tried to find buildings interesting with little success. Then holiday on Norfolk Broads found boats passing the end of the garden - they looked interesting thus joined Croydon Sailing Club sailing racing dinghies on the small park lake in the foreground! Also discovered Naval Architecture and much to my teachers and parents surprise applied for and got myself a job working for Vickers Shipbuilding in Barrow in Furness. My first job was as part of the launch way squad for the launch of HMS Invincible and it has all developed from there.
- Think of a polar opposite childhood to my father’s and you’ll get mine. Born and raised in the rural lakes by two engineers and a further line on my Mum’s side, conversations about loading, launches and logistics were commonplace across the dinner table. However seeing my parent’s incredible feats of engineering did not stop me from pursuing my own interests. Ask anyone that knows me, they will be able to tell you that I’m most at home discovering new landscapes on horseback. The freedom I had as a youngster to go out and explore, venture into the hills and woodlands of the Lakes, to be exposed to the environment, risk and danger is something I am blessed to have experienced. An abundance of available opportunities allowed me to dream of new challenges and isolate my true passions including my creativity.
- Although we have identified that our early lives were contextually very different, in terms of what excited us and what we enjoyed, our childhoods can be seen as almost identical.
- The outdoors has been a major influence on both our lives and particularly the mountains and lakes of the Lake District close to where I spent the first 25 years of my career and where Charlotte was born. Nearly every weekend we would set out into the lakes fell walking, cycling, canoeing, sailing. Charlotte had bagged several lake district peaks before she could even walk strapped to my back as well as sitting in a child seat on the back of a tandem and nearly sailing out to the Fastnet Rock in a Wayfarer dinghy (from Roaring Water bay in SW Ireland). Taking young children on these sort of adventures posed technological and logistical challenges which we were able to address as challenges not unlike the sort of challenges we have faced in our professional life. I would like to think that this has impacted on me to take a can do attitude to problems and try to find ways that things can be done rather than the sometimes more obvious reasons why things can't be done. I completely agree, nature has that uncanny characteristic of being wild, unruly and non-conforming. A beast that will never be tamed. Pushing expectations and boundaries at every opportunity.
- On this note we want to introduce some projects that we admire and think in terms of engineering and design have overcome exceptional challenges with great success. So much so that they will most probably resonate with you as great icons of our time.
- One significant British Engineering achievement and one that is close to mine and Charlotte's heart is the Mini. and here we are talking about the proper job designed by Sir Alec Issigonis and not the BMW replica that Charlotte drives now! My Dad bought one of the first Mini's in 1959 a remarkable little car that lasted until the late seventies and for much of that time was the only means of family transport. My Mother, Sister and myself all learnt to drive in that little car. When you look back at early photographs one is struck by just how far ahead of its time the Mini was - a little red car capable of swallowing a family of four and all its luggage compared to the large inefficient black cars that were the norm in those days.
- that success that my Dad has already identified was one that came from an intertwining of the creative and the technical. Alec Issigonis was an incredible networker, he developed a series of strong relationships which allowed him to access the key skills he needed for each stage of his various projects. The ability to connect information and talent allowed him to tackle challenges from a unique perspective. Hence when economic and environmental crises caused British Motor Corp to have to shift gears it was Alec Issigonis they asked to develop their new range. On many occasion the political and financial implications on engineering are overlooked. Those projects that can remain resilient and/or thrive under constraint are the ones that we remember and admire. My father has equally felt the effects and tremors of fluctuating economics, devising his own range of tools and methods to bring about innovation in testing circumstances.
- With its revolutionary transverse engine and front wheel dive using constant velocity joints, rubber spring suspension and monocoque body this really was the fore runner of the modern cars that we see on the road today. Born out of a specific set of circumstances, increasing fuel prices and increased family ownership of cars the Mini had caused a revolution in the design and engineering of cars.
- And timing could not have been more important than with the construction projects of the 2012 London Olympic Games. The London Aquatics Centre, as a more recent example of a great engineering project is one that I have had the privilege of visiting both in and after the Olympic Games. A beautiful space designed by the late Zaha Hadid. It may only hold two Olympic sized swimming pools opposed to the 12 that can fit on the hangar of HMS Queen Elizabeth but it is not recognised as the most challenging construction in the Olympic park for mere trivial reasons. A construction of this size took 8 years to complete and had to be designed for two functions with very different requirements.
- What makes this project so remarkable is not only the amount of stakeholders it had to be accountable for but how many organisations that had to collaborate in order to create the finished build that stands today. It is also extremely important for an engineer and a designer to be able to construct their projects in a way that makes them easily understood and transferred to different teams, clients and colleagues.
- Communication at every level of design and engineering is paramount. Dad and I are versed in communicating our ideas in sketch or model form, techniques we have honed throughout our education and careers. The satisfaction in developing a skill is great motivation and inspiration for young people venturing along a career path. By developing an idea visually, adjustments to size and scope can be tackled much easier. The London Aquatics centre underwent considerable change in order to realise the large roof and glass sides which were critical to the design. The roof became supported by trusses at three contact points. Sometimes the visual concepts cannot be met due to physical constraints and it is at this point that engineers and designers must innovate. Retaining the integrity of the design and overall build has made a project like this a substantial achievement.
- While not perhaps as iconic as either the Mini or the Aquatic centre the projects that I have been involved in have been on a pretty grand scale. Events in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the birth of Charlotte though I don't think the latter was significant! placed the shipbuilding business in Barrow in a difficult situation. Through the cold war years they had concentrated solely on the building of Nuclear submarines which they had been delivering on a regular basis but suddenly the next class of nuclear submarines SSN 20 which turned out to be Astute was only in the early stages of design and there was a huge hole in the future order book. Getting back into surface ship build was essential to fill the gap. However Barrow had not built a surface ship for the best part of a decade and not designed and built one for far longer than that. The facilities had been modified which meant that investment was needed to reinstate a large surface ship build capability. The opportunity was for the design and build of a helicopter carrier for the Royal Marines, but how to come up with a strategy that would provide the RN and the marines with a product that fulfilled their needs was affordable and which we could compete against experienced shipbuilding businesses. The innovative solution was to get a "commercial vessel" built by a commercial shipyard to commercial standards and to a design provided by us that met the customer needs and which could be "converted" to add essential military features. I led the design of the concept, the technical negotiations with the commercial shipyard and the technical content of the successful bid that led to HMS Ocean and then directly impacted on Barrow building the two Assault ships HMS Albion and Bulwark and the two auxiliary tankers Wave Knight and Wave Ruler and ensured the continuation of a viable business into the Astute submarine programme.
- In 1999 with the merger of the Barrow Shipbuilding business into the newly formed BAE Systems business an opportunity arose to join the Type 45 Prime Contract Office working to design, develop, build, test and trial a class of 6 anti air warfare destroyers. This involved relocating from Barrow to near Bristol and a great deal of travelling to Glasgow where the ships were constructed. I quickly rose to the post of Chief Engineer and led the engineering of these ships through detail design, construction, launch, sea trails and up to acceptance of the first of class HMS Daring. These are very technologically advanced vessels and a clear step change from the Type 42 destroyers that they have replaced. There were and continue to be many challenges with the introduction of these technological advances into service, both from the equipment itself and the training and mode of operation of the crew in operating these ships. I found going to sea on these ships on sea trials a very exciting and moving experience and certainly something that continues to motivate me.
- In 2008 I became Chief Engineer and Engineering Director of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, an alliance of industry and the MoD working together to deliver the nations flagships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. At 65,000 tonnes displacement these will be easily the largest ships ever to enter service with the Royal Navy when the first one is commissioned next year. This has been an incredible project to be involved in. The scale of it was well beyond the capability and capacity of any one organisation in the UK and is only being achieved through a collaborative arrangement across UK industry. The ships were designed in two locations in the South of England, the detail design carried out at locations across England and Scotland using multiple CAD models and two different CAD tools. They have been built in sections at 6 different shipyards around the UK with the sections being transported by sea to Rosyth where the sections have been assembled in a modified Victorian dry dock in a yard with no previous experience of ship construction. It is a tribute to all the thousands of people involved that the project is now nearing completion with the first ship preparing to go on sea trials in March next year and the second ship ready to be launched in April. I am immensely proud that all the major evolutions of transporting the sections from the build yards to the assembly yard have occurred on or before their scheduled date and most importantly with no one getting hurt. It was a great day when the Queen named her ship in Rosyth and I look forward to seeing her exit Rosyth under the Forth Bridge and then enter her home port of Portsmouth in the spring of next year - a fitting conclusion to my career.
- Taking a different tact, I’ve chosen to categorise my projects by purpose. Design and engineering to convey a message. We work with not only commercial businesses but also charities, this example is of the design and build of a tactile pop-up installation for a blind and partially sighted charity. Our client was herself blind, we used design methods to show her physical representations of our ideas before the design was finalised. Exploring the other senses to convey ideas was part of our process.
- Design and engineering to increase performance. In this case we were asked to beautify an existing design, we communicated to the client that there may be an opportunity to improve its functionality. This client walked away with not just a superior product in terms of style but with an improved performance of 200%.
- Design and engineering to explore cutting edge style and aesthetic. When the specialists want to try something new we can help process their ideas to cutting edge technologies. For this project close working with the haute couture fashion brand brought about the greatest value, helping them bring to life key elements of their Met Gala garment. We guided them through the process of Computer Aided Design and additive manufacturing, translating their very physical working practices into the digital.