Sharing my engineering, business and practical experience
If you look through the website for James E Richardson (Electrical) Limited you will see that I have worked a variety of industries. As a graduate I studied electronics and software engineering. I learned how to design analogue and digital equipment and control the management of complex software projects. During this time I was sponsored by BT and had three interesting placements in a training centre, a division installing business communication links and a satellite earth station.
After leaving university I worked for British Steel (later Corus) on heavy industrial equipment. This included highly automated, PLC controlled machinery, harsh environments with water, heat and mechanical damage an everyday occurrence, gas systems and a large number of overhead cranes. I worked in both project and maintenance departments, learning about two very different sets of priorities.
I eventually left Corus and spent ten years working on the Pelamis renewable energy device. This not only gave me experience of design, specification, purchase, assembly and commissioning but allowed me to repeat this cycle several times on the same basic equipment. This gave me an opportunity to experiment with improvements to products and assembly processes in a way that few people get. Sadly this company became insolvent and all its employees were made redundant.
I decided to work for myself and then formed James E Richardson (Electrical) Limited, which I currently run today. Not only has this given me several interesting new contracts and a new outlook on employment, it has opened up a whole world of small business accounting to me that I didn’t know existed.
Throughout this time I have always been interested in engineering, science and finance, whether this is following current affairs, carrying out DIY, making furniture or building electronic experiments.
Often in my career I have found it hard to get formal training. Instead I have learned from my own research, from the mistakes of myself and others and perhaps most of all from some of the excellent people I have worked with. In the articles published on this site I would like to share some of my experience. I hope you will find them interesting and a useful source of information. They will be most useful to a young engineer who finds themselves, as I was, in charge of maintaining or modifying industrial plant. They should however be interesting to anyone with a practical engineering approach, whether they apply these skills to industry, DIY or finance.
I have split the articles into three sections:
Electrical Engineering – Electrical design, maintenance, management
Business – Starting and running a small business, other financial articles
Practical and fun – Any other topics of interest to the practically minded. This may include for example DIY, home experiments in software and hardware, articles on any miscellaneous (usually technical) subject.
I hope you enjoy reading these articles.