What’s your role at Eadon?

I’m a Senior Engineer at Eadon. My job is developing and assessing engineering solutions, getting an understanding of what the client needs and working with them to make sure that we deliver that for them. 

What does a typical day look like for you, and how do you manage your to-do list?

A typical day for me is really varied – and that’s exactly what I enjoy about my job. One moment I might be doing quality design work or running calculations, the next I’m writing reports or meeting with clients.  It will vary with what types of projects I’m working on as well. I use a task‑management app to manage my to-do-list where I jot down every new item as it comes up. That way, nothing gets lost in my head. Then, roughly every day, I review the list: I assign priorities, set due dates, and make sure I’m focusing on the most important tasks first. I revisit the list regularly to check I’m still prioritising the right thing. 

Is there a project or piece of work you’re especially proud of?

Something I’m particularly proud of is a project called ‘Pass-Port’ which we worked on with the National Nuclear Laboratory (UKNNL.) The goal was to develop a safe, reliable solution for transferring small, irradiated samples within their labs to help improve their throughput, safety and efficiency.  Their labs are really critical resources so we were really pleased to prove our concept was feasible through research and testing. We worked well with UKNNL to develop a prototype design which we’re hoping to progress to manufacture and test in the future which would be really exciting. 

How do you stay motivated during long/complex projects?

Breaking down big, complex projects into smaller, manageable tasks and setting clear milestones is what keeps me motivated. I think it can be really easy with a big project to get overwhelmed, so I make a point of recognising progress and celebrating lots of little wins along the way. That might be finishing a report, completing a drawing, or building a prototype – I always try to acknowledge progress at every stage.  

How do you approach problem-solving when the solution isn’t immediately obvious?

It does depend on the project – but I think generally my approach is to try and boil the problem down to its simplest form and then ask myself certain questions. What’s driving it? What are the core requirements of the client? (Because you might get a list of 50 client requirements, but you need to figure out which ones are really important.) I think the key thing is trying to think outside the box, and that might mean talking to different people with different experience. We’ve got a lot of different experience at Eadon, so it’s very easy to do that. Even bad ideas can help you understand the problem – it’s all about blue sky thinking. 

What do you think makes a great engineering team?

I think a great engineering team is one that’s open to exploring ideas together, good at explaining things to one another and willing to talk each other through problems. The key thing is good communication, making sure everyone feels comfortable enough to talk through their ideas. Diverse experience and knowledge within a team really helps as well – and we’re lucky to have all these things at Eadon.

How would you personally measure the success of a project beyond deadlines and budgets?

I think it can vary. You can look at what you’ve designed and how well that works of course – but there’s also looking at what you’ve learned from the project. Is it new ground that you’ve not covered before? Did someone on the project develop new skills? And then obviously, looking at whether the client is happy – and again, it’s not only about the design – did they actually enjoy working with us? Did we enjoy working with them? All of these things to me are a good measurement of project success. 

What’s something unexpected you’ve learned from working in engineering?

Innovation is a scary word to a lot of people – most tend to think it means you have to reinvent the wheel. But what I’ve learned from working in engineering is that innovation can be something small. It can be small ideas that might just be doing something slightly different – that can be really powerful – and thinking slightly differently can lead to big changes in how you approach design or how you solve problems. There’re a lot of things that we do everyday that are infact innovative. 

What part of the engineering process do you find the most fulfilling, and why?

I think most engineers would probably say that it’s seeing a design get made or seeing something that you’ve assessed get made – it’s always going to be satisfying to see an end result. But again, there are little things along the way that are also fulfilling – like finishing a big report or calculation. Often big projects can take many years to get made, so you have to wait quite a while to get that ‘final moment’ – so I like to get fulfilment from the smaller steps taken along the way too. 

Do you have any engineering role models or mentors who’ve influenced or inspired you?

It has been the people I’ve worked with at Eadon who have influenced and inspired me. I started out here as a graduate so the learning from all the experienced people around me has shaped the kind of engineer I am now. 

In your opinion, what’s the most exciting thing happening in engineering right now? 

Of course, there are lots of things going on in robotics and AI and how that’s starting to shape design and interesting solutions to things.  

But I think the really exciting thing right now is that engineering is becoming more accessible. When I was younger, the thing that got me into engineering was watching engineering shows, like on the Discovery Channel – but unless you had certain channels and happened to watch those shows,  you weren’t otherwise really exposed to what engineering was. Nowadays kids have such easy access to interesting videos about engineering principles and projects on YouTube and other platforms. It’s a lot more accessible for younger generations to engage with, which is great. 

What do you think engineering will look like 10 years from now?

It’s easy to say AI is going to have a big influence, but it’s hard to know exactly what that’s going to look like. It’ll probably mean certain tasks will become more automated – but I think there’s always going to be a need for a human engineer to understand what’s going on and to be able to interpret things themselves. I think we’ll use AI as a tool rather than as a resource that just does everything for you.

As well as that it will be interesting to see how manufacturing technology changes and develops – it’s revolutionized a lot in the past 5-10 years through advancements like 3D printing. 

If you could solve any world problem using engineering, what would it be and why?

I’m not sure there’s a single massive problem that I could solve as an engineer, but it’s good to contribute to bigger problems like advancements in nuclear energy. I’m a big believer in nuclear energy and it being an enabler towards green energy. Being able to use my engineering skills to help with things like that is pretty exciting. 

What’s one piece of advice you think engineers just starting out in their careers would benefit from?

You don’t need to know everything when you start out – and nobody expects you to! I came out of university thinking that I needed to be an expert in everything I’d learnt – but that wasn’t the case. You need to know how to boil a problem down and how to work with people to figure it out. You need to understand things in an engineering context, and you can build up the knowledge as you go.