Profile

I am 38 and live in Worcestershire.  I have 3 spoilt dogs, all border collies and they are such lovely dogs. Their names are Cadi, Erin and Joey.  Cadi and Erin are 9 years old and Joey is 2.

Figure 1. Showing my dogs Cadi, Erin and Joey now and when they were puppies.

I enjoy cooking meals from scratch.  I like to do arts & crafts in the little spare time I have; make candles, bathbombs, soap and sew household things such as cushions & curtains.  I used to be a well known designer for sewing magazines and I won awards for my designs.  I do craft fairs and sell my art and other home made gifts.

I’m a bit of a Astro geek.  I spend hours in the garden observing our moon, planets, stars and galaxies (when I should be sleeping for work – sssssshhhhh 😊).  I’m not very good but I like to photograph the moon, planets and galaxies.

Figure 2. A picture of the Super moon I took on the 25th May 2021.  A picture of  the galaxy NGC 1309 taken on 5th April 2021

I enjoy building Lego and have built all the space sets; the Apollo 11 Lunar lander, the Apollo 11 rocket, the discovery shuttle and the International Space station.

Figure 3. My LEGO international Space Station.

I am a book worm.  I love reading books on Space and Quantum Physics, don’t always understand all elements of Quantum Physics but it makes me think really hard and I like that.  I listen to podcasts every day.  My work means long hours driving and so I enjoy listening to series of Podcasts. I like the Nasa podcasts the most.  I am currently listening to a BBC Podcast called Death in Ice Valley, which I’m really enjoying.

I’m an Incorporated Engineer specialising in Local Exhaust Ventilation, called LEV for short.  It’s basically a hoover but on a mega industrial scale.

Most factories in the UK make all sorts of wonderful things but unfortunately the process of making things produces dusts and fumes.  Just some examples:

• Quarries blasting out stone & slate produce silica dust.
• Welding produces fume.
• Plastic bag manufacturers produce polymer fumes.
• Wood working produces wood dust.

These dusts and fumes are bad for the lungs if you breathe them in.  Because they are bad for your health they are governed by the CoSHH Regulations.  CoSHH is short for the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health.  What we do is prevent people breathing in the dusts and fumes by adding extraction to suck away the dust and fumes. In doing so we are complying with the CoSHH Regulations and Pollution control set by the Environmental Agency.

You may have some LEV extraction in your school if you have a woodworking classroom.  If you have any fretsaws, band or disk sanders then that produces wood dust.  You should have some sort of extraction that sucks away the dust.

Summary of what we do as a company

I work for my dad.  Our base is a small factory in Droitwich in Worcestershire.

Figure 4. Picture of our factory (my van is the middle one)

A brief summary of our companies services:

Design.

We firstly have to tell our guys in the factory what to make.  We do this by doing design work.  Our customer rings us with a problem.  We go to see the customer, look at their problem and use our skills and knowledge to produce a solution.

By solution we mean an extraction system suitable for their industrial process for the dust produced from the making process.  We send our customer a quotation with a specification detailing our proposal, which normally includes outlining a design using maths (maths is very important).  We then put together a costing for making, installing and testing.  If successful, then we will get a purchase order to do the work. Then we will go to see the customer again, only this time we measure up the area in detail.  These measurements are used to put our design into an AutoCAD drawing.  We send the drawing to the customer and if they approve the design then we move onto making.

Figure 5. Showing a typical CAD Drawing.

Make.

We manufacture mainly from sheet metal, with some engineering structural steels for making support brackets.

Figure 6. Inside our factory

The sheet metal is delivered on pallets in flat sheets.  These sheets are cut to size dependant upon what we are making, we use a CNC plasma cutting machine to cut out shapes of what we need to make.

Figure 7. Our CNC Plasma cutting machine cutting out patterns.

Figure 8. My dad welding.

Once the material has been cut out we then use other machines such as rollers and hammers to shape the piece.  We also use welding and lock forming to join the material and secure our pieces.

Once we’ve made the pieces, they look like this (bit like a lego kit waiting to be built):

Figure 9. Some of the parts we’ve made.

Installation.

All those bits we made are sent on a lorry to the site ready for our fitting team to install.  Installation for me is the best bit.  You see your design and CAD drawing come to life.  Installation includes many risks such as working at height.  We hire in machines to help with the task.  Forklifts and cranes to help with the lifting.  Cherry pickers and scissor lifts for safe working at height.

Figure 10. Crane lifting the ductwork into position

Figure 11. My little brother driving a telehandler (like a forklift) lifting smaller sections of duct up onto the roof.

Figure 12. Crane lifting a filter unit together.

Test.

Once the system has been electrically wired up and is working.  We test the system and take measurements (mainly the wind speed in the pipe and pressure) to make sure it is working as we designed.  If it isn’t we then have to find out why not and fix it so that it does work.  We then type our findings into a report for the client in compliance with the CoSHH Regulations.

Figure 13. This is a manometer used to measure the speed and pressure inside a duct (pipe)

As I said, I don’t really have a typical day.  No two days are the same.  This is because being a small company, we have to do everything ourselves.  There is so much that we do.

A day in the office includes:

• Drafting Risk Assessments.
• Drafting reports.
• Replying to emails.
• Ordering parts.
• Researching and reading up for a particular design.
• Doing calculations for a design.
• Drafting technical drawings.
• Cleaning and tidying my van.
• Looking after my LinkedIn forum called LEV Central.
• Sometimes out in the workshop at my bench if I’ve got practical work to do.

Figure 14.  Example of an LEV Statutory test report.

Figure 15. Example of design calculations.

A day on site may include:

• Measuring up for design.
• Statutory testing of LEV systems.
• Personal monitoring (using a pump to measure the amount of dust and fume in someone’s breathing zone)
• Changing filters.
• Fault finding, Maintenance; Fixing things and measuring to get parts made.

Figure 16.  Servicing a dust filter unit.

Figure 17.  I’m up in a cherry picker basket. Recording the speed of the airflow and the pressure. This is part of the statutory testing.

Figure 18. Those filter bags should be white and clean. I took them out and refitted, re doing the seal to fix it.

As a company, we cover the whole of the UK and Ireland. A whole host of different industries including:

• Quarries
• Dockyards
• Education
• Food and Packaging
• Vehicle manufacture and maintenance
• Electronics
• Metal working
• Wood working
• and much more.

Figure 19. I get to work in some really awesome sites. I must admit I do get a bit tired of the travelling and staying away from home sometimes. I do get to see some of our countries great places. Natural and Engineering marvels.  So that balances the whole experience out.

I’d use the money towards the publishing of a magazine.  I’d like this magazine to be a collaborative project with the students interviewing me to produce an educational magazine on practical engineering to be shared with and made available for schools.

Getting the children involved in the safety and engineering elements and get them to design the graphics.  I think it would be a wonderful project.  Not only would it enhance their learning but they would benefit from further engagement with an engineer.