Membership voice, November - December 2007
The TWI of today is quite different from the 'Institute' that I joined 21 years ago. I had graduated from one of the first trans-national 'double degree' courses between France and Britain which involved spending the fifth year of my French degree on an MSc course at Cranfield Institute of Technology.
The late Prof Apps, at Cranfield, had communicated to me his infectious passion for the science of welding, and I had decided to join the research centre which had contributed so much to the advancement of welding processes, the understanding of welding metallurgy and their impact on structural integrity.
Back then, Britain was still very insular, and TWI did not employ many foreigners. I was not the only one, I remember Tibor Szluha, from Hungary, who was running the Electron Beam laboratory and Mohammid Amin, originally from Pakistan, who was pioneering Synergic MIG welding. The chef was from Poland, and there might have been a couple more foreigners, but we were a tiny minority in a very British company.
Nowadays, TWI is very cosmopolitan. Engineers from all over the world are coming to work here. There is a 20-strong French contingent, many of them employed in NDT. The Chinese are also well represented, with similar numbers, followed by staff of Iranian origin and from the Indian subcontinent. In addition, almost all the Western European countries are represented amongst TWI staff and we are now welcoming engineers from Central and Eastern Europe. A few staff from Brazil, Mexico, Tunisia, Morocco, South Africa, South East Asia and the Middle East complete the mosaic of cultures that makes TWI staff today. All in all, about 10% of our staff come from outside the UK, compared with about 1% twenty years ago.
I believe this is adding to TWI's ability to provide services on an international scale, making it more open to the world. Twenty one years ago, all the operations were centralised in Great Abington. Nowadays the UK laboratories are spread across four sites (Great Abington, Port Talbot, Rotherham and Middlesbrough) and TWI has permanent operations in South East Asia, the Middle East, North America, South America and China, employing over 50 staff outside the UK.
The 'look' of TWI is also very different today compared with the pot-pourri of post war buildings scattered around the grounds of Abington Hall which I found 21 years ago. Stansted airport looked more like a local airfield, the M11 motorway had not been completed and TWI was only accessible by country roads and rail links from London.
Today most of the laboratories and offices have been relocated in the modern Bevan Braithwaite Building, part of Granta Park, a state-of-the-art Science Park in which TWI has a 20% stake. Granta Park is celebrated as one of the most successful developments of its kind, having attracted world class companies with its convenient location, easy access and wonderful landscaping around a lake and a cricket ground.
Recent visitors to TWI will have noticed that work has now started to extend Granta Park in two directions. The main expansion is between TWI and the village of Great Abington, behind the TWI staff car park. The other project is developing land where TWI old buildings used to stand, between the lake and the Granta river. Granta Park is inviting companies who are looking for premises near TWI in Cambridge to express their interest as they would like to create a synergy between tenants involved in advanced mechanical engineering. Contact granta@mepc.com for more information.
In 21 years, I have witnessed major changes to the culture, business organisation, buildings and landscape surrounding TWI. TWI has transformed itself from a quaint British Institute into a modern, international provider of technical services. What has remained unchanged, however, is the outstanding expertise of its staff, their enthusiasm and commitment to support Members. This and the quality of the facilities have remained of the highest standard. We are now able to provide our services in a better environment, and to a wider audience.
Fred Delany - Head of Industrial Member Services
