3 ms·

"we as a country don't do actual engineering" What do you mean by "actual engineering"? - the UK makes and develops satellites - designs, develops and produc

"we as a country don't do actual engineering" What do you mean by "actual engineering"? - the UK makes and develops satellites - designs, develops and produces a huge number of jet engines - is home to nearly all the Formula 1 teams - the Nissan car plant in Sunderland produced 500,000 cars last year which is a huge engineering challenge and is now the home to the main production of the LEAF electric car - Teeside is still the home of chemical processing - companies like Alert Me are leading the charge in smart energy consumption - last time I checked Arm were stil based in Sheffield and Cambridge and scaring the pants off Intel - last, but not least, BAE systems is in the midst of producing some of the best and most advance submarines in the world and commissioning nuclear reactors in the process. I do however agree with your first point - although there are a lot of wind farms around now which is nice to see

porker 13y ago
And how many of these are UK owned? Which I took to be his point, given the dig that a French company will be building the new Nuclear power plants at Hinkley Point...
- lostlogin 13y ago
  I was wondering how many weren't arms industry related as every engineer I know in the UK is doing arms work. I was pleasantly surprised.
  - timthorn 13y ago
    I used to work at ARM and ever since then have been invited to all sorts of weapons and defence conferences.
- coob 13y ago
  Does it matter who owns the company if it's British engineers?
- simonbarker87 13y ago
  Doesn't matter who owns the company - the engineers are British and they are solving their engineering problems in the UK. CocaCola is obviously a US company but the production plant in the UK has some very interesting manufacturing/engineering problems (as does Mars, Proctor and Gamble, Fuji (pharma division)) and if you really need examples of British companies then try Dynex, Wolfson Microelectronics, Imagination Technolgies, British Sugar and Dyson. His dig about a Frech company was just a fashionable quip that is doing the rounds right now - yes they are better at some things than us but likewise we sell them planes etc so each nation plays to it's strengths
  - walshemj 13y ago
    Um a lot of these European companies favor their own nationality it's going to be french engineers and possibly a lot of the navvies/ground workers will be imported.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - porker 13y ago
    Thans, that's an interesting list. In terms of pure engineering I agree it doesn't matter who owns the company; in terms of whether engineering is having its full impact on Britain (other than by providing jobs) I'd say it does - if profits get moved to other countries and taxes paid elsewhere, we're losing out and I'd like to see more UK owned companies for that reason.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >CocaCola is obviously a US company but the production plant in the UK has some very interesting manufacturing/engineering problems Citation needed. They are Coca Cola manufacturing plants all around the world. From Bolivia to India and from Germany to Albania, and they don't have any interesting manufacturing/engineering problems. Nothing that wasn't already solved in the US HQs anyway.
    - 13y ago
- eitally 13y ago
  I was going to reply to the original post but this perhaps more apropos. My father started his career with Babcock & Wilcox after leaving a nuclear sub as an electrician's mate with a nuclear engineering MS; his division -- the org that designs and maintains reactors & power plants -- was later acquired by Framatome, which later formed part of Areva (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva). It's a French company, but entirely global and the nuclear power division (Areva NP) performs nearly all of it's reactor design work in the US, as well as most of the planning/oversight for power plant support & maintenance/inspection services. (Speaking of plant inspections, the job of inspector is one of those high-stress but über-high pay seasonal jobs you never hear about. $200k+ for 6mo/yr of work, but it's ~2000hrs of work compressed into that period.) Anyhoo, growing up I was privileged to tour a number of different power plants in the US, and -- besides the scale of things Charlie notes in the blog post -- the thing that struck me most was that even though the designs were often very similar (all PWRs of some sort), the implementations were very different. Even though reactor design may be identical between plants, all the peripheral support infrastructure and all the wiring & plumbing is unique to each plant, and keeping track of everything is hugely complex. As an aside, and the bring relevance to HN, because of the complexity of nuclear power plants -- particularly the plumbing and backup systems -- there is a huge market for simulation services (which is something Areva pretty much owns globally at this point), which consists of both electrical/mechanical engineering and software work. They literally build a control room for a specific power plant, identical to the actual control room but with software simulating all the inputs/outputs and allowing them to run all sorts of scenarios (and to train new operators). My dad had a few job openings for software engineers who had some nuke background, and positions requiring only a few years experience were paying $100-120k base, and this is in small city Virginia (Lynchburg) where you can buy a decent house for $150k.

porker 13y ago

And how many of these are UK owned? Which I took to be his point, given the dig that a French company will be building the new Nuclear power plants at Hinkley Point...

lostlogin 13y ago
I was wondering how many weren't arms industry related as every engineer I know in the UK is doing arms work. I was pleasantly surprised.
- timthorn 13y ago
  I used to work at ARM and ever since then have been invited to all sorts of weapons and defence conferences.
coob 13y ago
Does it matter who owns the company if it's British engineers?
simonbarker87 13y ago
Doesn't matter who owns the company - the engineers are British and they are solving their engineering problems in the UK. CocaCola is obviously a US company but the production plant in the UK has some very interesting manufacturing/engineering problems (as does Mars, Proctor and Gamble, Fuji (pharma division)) and if you really need examples of British companies then try Dynex, Wolfson Microelectronics, Imagination Technolgies, British Sugar and Dyson. His dig about a Frech company was just a fashionable quip that is doing the rounds right now - yes they are better at some things than us but likewise we sell them planes etc so each nation plays to it's strengths
- walshemj 13y ago
  Um a lot of these European companies favor their own nationality it's going to be french engineers and possibly a lot of the navvies/ground workers will be imported.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- porker 13y ago
  Thans, that's an interesting list. In terms of pure engineering I agree it doesn't matter who owns the company; in terms of whether engineering is having its full impact on Britain (other than by providing jobs) I'd say it does - if profits get moved to other countries and taxes paid elsewhere, we're losing out and I'd like to see more UK owned companies for that reason.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >CocaCola is obviously a US company but the production plant in the UK has some very interesting manufacturing/engineering problems Citation needed. They are Coca Cola manufacturing plants all around the world. From Bolivia to India and from Germany to Albania, and they don't have any interesting manufacturing/engineering problems. Nothing that wasn't already solved in the US HQs anyway.
  - 13y ago
eitally 13y ago
I was going to reply to the original post but this perhaps more apropos. My father started his career with Babcock & Wilcox after leaving a nuclear sub as an electrician's mate with a nuclear engineering MS; his division -- the org that designs and maintains reactors & power plants -- was later acquired by Framatome, which later formed part of Areva (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva). It's a French company, but entirely global and the nuclear power division (Areva NP) performs nearly all of it's reactor design work in the US, as well as most of the planning/oversight for power plant support & maintenance/inspection services. (Speaking of plant inspections, the job of inspector is one of those high-stress but über-high pay seasonal jobs you never hear about. $200k+ for 6mo/yr of work, but it's ~2000hrs of work compressed into that period.) Anyhoo, growing up I was privileged to tour a number of different power plants in the US, and -- besides the scale of things Charlie notes in the blog post -- the thing that struck me most was that even though the designs were often very similar (all PWRs of some sort), the implementations were very different. Even though reactor design may be identical between plants, all the peripheral support infrastructure and all the wiring & plumbing is unique to each plant, and keeping track of everything is hugely complex. As an aside, and the bring relevance to HN, because of the complexity of nuclear power plants -- particularly the plumbing and backup systems -- there is a huge market for simulation services (which is something Areva pretty much owns globally at this point), which consists of both electrical/mechanical engineering and software work. They literally build a control room for a specific power plant, identical to the actual control room but with software simulating all the inputs/outputs and allowing them to run all sorts of scenarios (and to train new operators). My dad had a few job openings for software engineers who had some nuke background, and positions requiring only a few years experience were paying $100-120k base, and this is in small city Virginia (Lynchburg) where you can buy a decent house for $150k.