Profile

I live in a small town near Kilmarnock, south of Glasgow with my wife.  We have three cats, one of them is almost 20 and the other two are Maine Coons.  We moved to this house in December 2019 because the garage has a workshop at the back and an office space for me behind that.  When I work from home now I leave the house and can walk to the office through my garden which is rather different from having to drive 25 miles to my workplace office. It is difficult to think what my favourite food might be because I’ve been in lots of countries from Alaska to Australia, but I do like almost all seafood and curries are my weakness.  We have two grown up daughters who both live about 25 miles away in different directions.

I spend most of my free time either volunteering or preparing for volunteering.  That generally takes place in schools around the West Coast of Scotland or in the central belt, but when I can I go to the Big Bang at the NEC and volunteer there in various roles for the whole 4 days.  Engineering has given me a fantastic career and life and I see volunteering to help young people better understand what engineering and science is all about as away of paying back for this life experience.

I enjoy watching and reading science fiction, particularly Star Wars, Star Trek and Marvel movies.

At the moment I’m helping make face visors, and face masks for NHS and local carers and clips that take the face mask elastic away from the back of ears to make them more comfortable.

The machines I work with generally make electricity in power stations or compress gas in process plants, so they are important for most people in the countries where they are used.  In particular I work with the electronic systems that control these machines.  As they are so large and the parts inside them are heavy and spin really fast, we have to treat them with care, else they could get damaged, or could break and hurt people.  My job is firstly to make sure that they are well controlled and behave properly.  I have to make sure that they do not run too fast or too slow, dont get too hot and start and stop when they are asked to and deliver the energy they should.  The ones in the North Sea oil platforms are very important because if they stopped or were not reliable then there would be no electricity there and the oil could not be extracted.

When I first started working with these machines the systems were very mechanical but over the years they became electronic and now are computer based so I have to understand these various technologies.

Today the newer machines which have computers that control them allow me to see what the machines are doing and see if any adjustments are needed, or provide the people who work with them locally some help in making adjustments to keep them safe and operating properly.  This I can do from anywhere there is an internet connection, so I do not need to travel as much as I once did.

Before computers were used to control these machines I had to travel to work with them and that took me to many countries all over the world.

My day generally starts at around 07:30 till about 4:30, with lunch from 12:30 to 13:10, or at least that’s the plan!!

As I work with customers all over the world who have large machines that make electricity and as these machines are important for the country, when they need help, that can be at almost any time, so my day can start early or finish late depending on what emails or telephone calls I get.  Lunch time too can be early or late if there are important things to do.

No two days are really the same and a day rarely goes to plan because of this international interaction.   There is a plan however and it usually starts by looking at email messages first to see if there are any that need urgent attention, then fit them into the plan left from the previous day.  After that I would review the machines we monitor on the internet and if they need any attention add them to the daily plan.  Next if there are any modifications or reports to work on I would do them before and after lunch, and at the end of the day prepare the plan for the next day.  Whatever work is not done will become more urgent on the next day.