“Brad is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer who has acquired a wealth of engineering knowledge, skills and understanding over more than 40 years of educational, training, research and industrial experience across the system, product, asset and project lifecycles in the automotive, defence, maritime, aerospace, oil & gas and utilities sectors.
For the majority of the last ten years Brad has worked as an independent consultant, including four and a half years of assignments on the programme that is creating one of the most complex products on earth. His clients included a number of blue chip engineering organisations:
However, significant changes in personal circumstances sparked a re-evaluation of priorities over the Covid period, and having done some research with a view to continue undertaking purposeful work, for the next chapter of his career Brad has decided to change direction…
Recent research sponsored by the British Government, Industry and the Professional Engineering bodies has reiterated that the perennial problem that far too few young people are entering the engineering professions in the UK, has not been solved. One conclusion of the research is that the messaging related to engineering that is received by primary school pupils – in terms of clarity, quality and frequency – needs much more attention…leaving such messaging about engineering until secondary school, is just too late.
Therefore, over the next few years, Brad’s intent is to play his part in addressing that problem - by using his experience to pass on some of his engineering knowledge, skills and understanding to future generations and encouraging them to consider engineering as a future career path. His focus is to build on the Design & Technology curriculum to “Gently introduce the ‘E’ into primary school stEm teaching and learning”.
Brad is a registered STEM Ambassador and has developed presentation and activity materials to engage directly with pupils to answer their recurring questions and open their eyes to the all-pervading nature of engineering in all of the man made world around them, and which impacts on everyone’s lives, every day:
These presentation materials are freely available for teachers to use with school pupils on a non-commercial basis within the school environment. They are located on the “Downloads” page at www.straight-thinkers.com.
However, the bigger challenge is to create the awareness, understanding and confidence in teachers, school governors and leaders, and the teacher training fraternity, that this is a nationally valuable pursuit. The good news is that the enhancements required in order to encourage future generations into engineering are not complex or time consuming – and having been married to a primary school teacher of over 25 years, the realities of the primary school classroom and the paramount need for pragmatism, are very well understood! To that end, a half day CPD workshop has been designed and developed to give teacher, school leadership and teacher trainer stakeholders the awareness, understanding and confidence to educate their cohorts of the all-pervading nature of engineering. The objective here is to try to achieve as much gearing as possible in delivering the message.
An outline of all the services offered, including the CPD workshop, can be found on the “Services” page at www.straight-thinkers.com. “
Locations: Nationwide