Profile

I live with my wife, who i met in school, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. We are both very adventurous people enjoying various outdoor pursuits and sports. During a normal week I coach and play rugby for my local first team, of which I am club captain, and can regularly be found at the Amersham climbing wall. Whenever we get a chance we zip down to Pembrokeshire, South West Wales, where we spend the majority of the time on the great beaches down there with our Springer Spaniel. I own power kites, mountain boards, surfboards and climbing equipment which i like to make use of at every opportunity.

I work within the building services industry, as an electrical engineer. Basically, I work along side Architects and structural engineers to ensure the building proposed is safe and suits the need of people using it. I took for granted the amount of work which goes into a building. The classrooms you are in for example;

It has to have a certain amount of air supply within it to keep you all breathing. Not only that but it controls how fresh the air is, it would soon get pretty hard to stay in the room if everyone had bad breath and there was not a suitable cycle of air to rid the “pollutants”.
There is also heating, to keep you warm and comfortable, hopefully and believe it or not, the stability of the structure!!
The lighting in your room (my favorite topic) is designed to suit what you are doing. Students of your age need it to be lit to a level of 300lx (pronounced lux) which is how bright it is and it has to be evenly spread. Your teacher, being older (ahem) needs it brighter. Lighting comes in different colours also, not just blue, green or red, but warm and cold white. The warmer the light the more sleepy you feel because it reflects a sunset and the hormone melatonine is released in your body which says time to go to sleep. The cooler the light, the closer it represents sun light, which makes people more awake and alert! What temperature white light do you think they need in the school?

A day may start with attending a meeting, either at site or the architects office. We will discuss the requirements of the proposed building and how best to move forward with the project before construction stage. I will then go back to the office and develop the designs using drawings and calculations to meet the legal requirements and local standards required to meet a functional building.

I started of my journey of a career attending Aylesbury Training Group. They are a college specializing in apprenticeships in different fields but mainly engineering and ICT. They provide hands on lessons for their students and help them to find companies to work for.