Louis Redding has been a member of the exec team for 3 years now and I'm very pleased to say he has recently been awarded CEng.  


I was keen to know why Louis joined the committee:


Louis says "Having attended an engineering exhibition in London a conversation was struck with a fellow passenger who had been to the same event.  That person was the current Chairman ....Alec.  The role of engineering within the economy and the need for qualified engineers quickly became the subject of the discussion.  For me, the choice of engineering was never just a career it is a vocation for life.  Throughout my life the profession has been central to everything I have done.  Whilst the barriers to excellence are high the attainment has served to provide great challenges and satisfaction.   Sadly the fact that engineering touches every aspect of a persons life is not taught within the school system.  Much is said about the role of the service and financial sectors in generating wealth for the nation.  Whilst this is no doubt true when viewed through a Macro lens, for me there is another truth.  Quite simply, those sectors do not 'make' money. They only redistribute existing wealth (in the case of service) and only extract commission from facilitation in the case of the finance sector.  The only way to make new money is through generating tangible added value.  That is you manufacture goods, generate energy, extract energy, or produce through other methods (viz Agriculture).  Central to all of this is engineering.  So when Alec asked if me if I would engage with the IET I was only to happy to do so".


Born in Birmingham, Louis was educated at the Grange Secondary School in Stourbridge and he demonstrated at a very early age an interest and talent for Engineering.  Louis's father owned a small contract Tool Room serving the Automotive and Domestic Appliance (White Goods) Sectors and as a teenager he would attend his fathers company when he could to earn pocket money cleaning down the machines when the company was closed.  Louis was an avid reader of biographies of great engineers as a teenage boy..... Boulton, Brunel, Maudslay, Naismith, Stevenson, Wallis, Watt etc and was a regular visitor to the Birmingham Science Museum where he studied the workings of the steam engines.  Louis achieved his PhD at Cranfield University in 2011 with his thesis entitled: "A Strategy formulation methodology for companies seeking to compete through IVHM enabled service delivery systems".


I asked Louis what was the one single greatest engineering influence that had inspired him, to which Louis very quickly responded: " seeing the Avro Vulcan Fly in my youth...particular interest was the delta wing design and the Rolls Royce Olympus Engines."  It seems that this experience determined Louis's career path.


Currently working for Jaguar Landrover Plc as D8/D7e Body Engineering Quality Leader, Louis is responsible for improvement in all aspects of current and forward model quality from foundation knowledge through to product creation, launch and production, and ‘Voice of the Customer’ analysis.   


In whatever spare time he has, Louis enjoys walking, target shooting and watching rugby union.  And two interesting nuggets of information I learned in talking to Louis are that he is a qualified diver and also served in the Territorial Army (37 Signals Regiment) for 6 years.


Congratulations to Louis for achieving CEng - quite appropriately,  Louis cites seeing his eldest daughter achieving her MSc and CEng Accreditations as one of his proudest moments.  


To finish, I asked Louis what achieving CEng meant to him:


"Attaining accreditation for me is a significant milestone in my career.  It marks universal recognition of my ability and on a personal note, it feels for me that I have joined both the 'family' and 'community' of engineering professionals.  Quite simply I should have done it years ago but was always too busy and ignored gentle prompts to complete the registration documents.  I urge others not to do the same.  I now intend to apply for Fellowship in 2017 building upon my experiences gained within engineering research at Cranfield University where I remain a visiting research fellow. "


So throwing this open to discussion, please comment below on what  was the one single greatest engineering influence that inspired you......