What’s your role at Eadon and what does it involve? 

I’m a designer. I spend most of my time creating drawings and CAD models for the various projects we work on and help facilitate the designs that the engineers themselves come up with. 

What inspired you to pursue this career? 

When I was a kid, I’d enjoy taking things apart when they broke and having a go at putting them back together and fixing them. There was also a show I used to enjoy watching called Scrapheap Challenge where they’d build things out of scrap and make them work and I loved that too. That really stuck with me.

What’s something about your job that people wouldn’t necessarily know? 

I think most people assume that a designer just does what they’re told and that they just draw or model whatever they’re told. But in my experience, I find it’s more of a partnership. You can go back and say, ‘This isn’t going to work because of this,’ or ‘I think you need to change this’ – it’s more of a collaboration between the engineer and designer. 

How do you approach planning at the start of a new project? 

At Eadon, we apply the same core approach to every project to ensure consistency and quality: we start by understanding the problem, then we decide on the best approach and then we’ll deliver the solution. So that process stays the same, but the level of detail is scaled to suit the size of the project. For smaller jobs, planning might just be an informal chat about what needs doing, what needs to work, and what needs modelling. For larger projects, the planning becomes much more structured – we’ll outline how many drawings and models are needed and put together a detailed plan for how we’re going to tackle it.

What’s one thing you’ve learned from a colleague that’s stayed with you? 

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to always assume that whoever’s looking at your drawing might not know as much as you do. It’s not about thinking they’re not clever – it’s about making things as clear as possible so there’s no room for confusion. So the aim is always to make my drawings so straightforward that anyone can understand them. 

What’s an interesting project that you’ve worked on recently? 

The Catena Cable Chain Lifting Frame project has been an interesting one because we were quite limited by the crane available on site. Since the work was offshore, we couldn’t simply bring in a different crane, which meant we had to design within the constraints of what was already there. We had to design a frame capable of lifting around 15.5 tonnes, but we only had 5 tonnes to work with for the frame itself, since the crane’s maximum capacity was 20 tonnes. So we had to figure out how to lift a heavy load using a relatively lightweight frame. 

What values do you think are important in engineering? 

Honesty and clear communication are really important. It’s much better to be upfront – whether you’re unsure about something or you think a certain approach isn’t feasible. Clear, open communication with your clients and your team helps projects run more smoothly and creates space for collaboration and effective problem-solving. 

What keeps you excited about engineering? 

I think the fact that there are always new challenges to solve and ways to improve on what we’ve done before. We do a lot of projects that are similar in nature but each one is slightly different. So you can always draw on your knowledge from previous experience but the solution usually ends up being a bit different every time. 

Have you ever worked on a project that surprised you in terms of how it turned out? 

I was working on an adjustment frame where we needed to come up with a solution that allowed for movement across numerous degrees of freedom. I drew on some knowledge from bridge bearings that we could adapt for this purpose. We prototyped the idea and it actually worked really well – both in terms of how the load was transferred through the structure we designed and in providing the movement we needed.  

If you could go back in time and be involved in one moment in engineering history, what would it be and why? 

I’d probably go back to just after World War Two, during the late 1950s and early 1960s – when there were major advancements in rocketry and re-entry vehicle design. I find that era really interesting. I’ve always liked rockets and being involved in that early stage, just before the Apollo programme, would’ve been incredible. And obviously it would be nice to have my name remembered in engineering history as well!