Your career has taken you from the UK to France and back – what inspired you to become an engineer?
Having spent the last decade in France and seen at first-hand how they view and respect engineers in society, I think it’s critical we focus on our future talent pool here in the UK.
Engineering and scientific careers also have to be appealing to everyone, regardless of ‘class’ or background as it’s such a critical profession. We cannot keep losing the ‘best of the best’ engineers to careers in banking and other sectors.
Like the rest of industry, we in Thales want to see talented, commercially astute and innovative engineers at the heart of what we do.
We would like to see greater diversity to widen and deepen the pool from which we draw, but this starts much earlier in the educational system.
I think STEM ambassadors also have a massive role to play. You can only be inspired by what you see at an early age – and I speak from experience.
I wanted to become an engineer because of my early fascination with aerospace and space. I always remember as a boy going with my grandmother to the National Air & Space Museum in Washington and being utterly transfixed by it – it remains one of my favourite places in the world.
The museum is home to the Wright Flyer, the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled sustained flight in 1903. We understand you have a personal connection to this milestone.
On 17 December in North Carolina, Orville Wright made history with that first flight of 12 seconds and 37 metres.
In a previous Thales role, I led the team that won the MOD programme to develop Watchkeeper, the new tactical unmanned air system for the British Army. That proposal was delivered on 17 December 2003, 100 years to the day after Wright first flew, paving the way for the use of autonomous systems in the UK military.
When Watchkeeper made its first civil authorised flight, the signature taking responsibility for flight UAV001 was mine, a dream for a childhood aero-modeller.
Where do you see the future of passenger flight and the development of autonomous technology?
Sustainability is quite rightly growing in importance and I think we’re now going to see a much-changed travel rationale with a higher emphasis on environmental issues.
This could include greater use of smaller, but more efficient aircraft and the increased use of autonomy in the cockpit to aid the pilot. I also see the greater use of AI and technology to improve the green footprint.
By combining AI with our expertise in trajectory prediction algorithms for flight management systems, it is possible to predict air traffic with a greater degree of certainty, and thus anticipate the decisions that will need to be made; improving factors such as cutting down on aircraft circling waiting to land, burning fuel, aircraft waiting on taxiways.
Where do you see the immediate future of AI, drones and robotics – where can technology help society?
The response to COVID-19 has already given us indications of the direction of travel.
Early into the pandemic, Thales and partners mobilised in civilian airspace to bring beyond visual line of sight capabilities to drones delivering PPE and medical equipment from the Scottish mainland to a remote hospital on the Island of Mull.
It proved a success and massively cut down what it used to take to deliver by road and ferry.
A technology-led bounce back from Covid is going to involve novel technologies such as quantum, artificial intelligence, clean tech, data analytics, connectivity, cybersecurity and autonomy.
Although in all cases humans will have to take responsibility for the consequences of autonomous decision-making, we will have to learn the trust the benefits of technology.
Where can engineering and tech companies play their part in the road out of COVID?
A change of mindset: we’re a global company of 80,000 employees in 68 countries and we can leverage that international pedigree around exports, but we also need to be agile in our solutions and be prepared to partner in our thinking – be that with other companies, academia and SMEs.
We need a healthy supply chain across the regions. For example, we’ve invested in a world-leading centre for autonomous technology in Turnchapel, Plymouth – but the real catalyst for success will be building a strong and vibrant ecosystem of SMEs, universities and specialists to work alongside us – the South-West has a strong part to play in making the UK an ‘autonomy superpower’.
How important are bodies such as the IET? How important or useful is professional registration for engineers?
It is important to us that our systems are trusted to be safe and secure. This is why we invest a lot in our scientists and engineers to develop and maintain their skills in the latest technologies.
We cover the membership fees of staff if they belong to a professional body and encourage all our engineers to achieve chartered engineer status.
Our engineering graduate programme is accredited by the IET, IoP, RAES and IMechE and is designed to develop graduate engineers to a point where they can achieve professional registration at the end of this four-year programme.
In your career with Thales, what have been some of the most iconic programmes or achievements you have witnessed?
2021 has seen the launch of Carrier Strike Group 21, with HMS Queen Elizabeth leading the Royal Navy’s biggest global deployment in a generation.
We’re very proud to have designed the ship and to be part of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance that built it.
The deployment is a wonderful demonstration of British engineering skills.
In space, do people know we built more than half of the pressurised volume of the International Space Station?
We’re now going to play a key role in the building of the habitat and refuelling modules for the Gateway space station as part of the Artemis mission to land the first woman on the Moon. Right now, our lasers are being used on NASA’s Perseverance Rover search for life missions on Mars.
We’re the eyes and ears of the UK Dreadnought Class submarine and we were the first to fly a UAS in civil airspace.
Ultimately, engineers want to make a difference and I feel incredibly lucky to work on such iconic projects, alongside such inspirational people, in such a fantastic industry.