The evolving role of the ‘Design Engineer’ 23rd August 2019

A drive to develop new workstreams and expand the Civil & Structural Engineering team at BakerHicks, has led to the appointment of Nick Wood to the newly-created role of associate director for Civil Engineering. Wood, a Chartered Civil Engineer with more than 25 years’ experience in site development infrastructure projects, has joined BakerHicks specifically to lend his civils’ experience to their Civil & Structural team, supporting the company’s growth plans.

Farnell reckons that designers, systems integrators, panel builders and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) engineers now have a single source for all of their industrial automation products following the distributor’s addition of 12,000 new Schneider Electric products to its portfolio.

Britain’s manufacturers are calling for an urgent rethink to Government’s Apprenticeship Levy to make access to funding more flexible so that industry can develop the essential skills of the future. The call comes on the back of a report by Make UK, An Unlevy playing field for manufacturers, which reveals that 95% of manufacturers want to see the Apprenticeship Levy changed and just 5% happy with the current system. This figure has not changed from a year ago, showing that manufacturers’ frustrations remain strong.

A disastrous fire at P Patterns in Brierley Hill turned out to be the catalyst for a new and stronger company with some help from DMG MORI. P Patterns produces medium to large patterns for the foundry industry in iron, copper beryllium and model board.  The patterns are used for high volume parts, mainly in the rail, automotive and earthmoving industries for applications such as suspension parts and wheels which are ultimately delivered to major OEMs including Caterpillar and Scania.

US-based Noria Corporation has announced its partnership with Maintec, the UK’s only annual event dedicated to the maintenance and reliability industry. Noria Corporation was founded in 1997 with the single focus of helping the industry improve machine reliability through best practice lubrication and oil analysis. 

Conrad Electronic has offered B2B customers in the areas of maintenance, repair and operation (MRO) the opportunity to source products and services electronically, saving time and money, increasing efficiency, transparency and productivity for some time. Customers include government departments, research and development, education, as well as makers.

Hospitals, especially those with designated major trauma centres, depend on their emergency theatres to deliver life-saving treatment. So, when an air handling unit (AHU) needed an overnight repair, Sulzer engineers were reportedly able to complete the project and ensure no operations were cancelled.

With application-tailored implementation of the umati interface for the machine tool sector, since 2017 clear contents and technical key data for translation into hands-on reality have been drawn up. What this means specifically, and what visitors can expect to see at the EMO Hannover, are explained by three experts.