Robin James

Robin James, Associate at Elementa Consulting after joining in 2014, recently traded in his high vis for retirement after over 35 years in the industry. On his last day at the firm, Robin looks back over a career in engineering, spanning multiple countries and major industry milestones, before considering what the future might hold.

So, Robin, it’s your last day as resident site engineer as you embark on retirement, can you remember what your first day on the job was like?

Yes I can, I started an apprenticeship at Brightside in Victoria Square in 1970. It was an office, so you came there on the first day and saw the secretary and they took you and got all your kit, which was a ruler, a slide square, a set of pencils and an ashtray, as opposed to the keyboard and mouse that you get now! They weren’t invented for a long time…

I spent a year and a half on the drawing board doing drawings of layouts, plants and so on. Obviously, CAD didn’t exist, so it was all in pencil and then you’d rub it out again and make the changes. It was a lot longer process!

What led you to a career in engineering?

It was actually something I ended up falling into as we didn’t really have the knowledge, or even the choice, when I was at school. Someone like a careers officer would chat to you about what you wanted to do or skills you wanted to develop, but you weren’t given a wide range of choices! I said I wanted to become a footballer because I just couldn’t take it seriously.

I think because I’d always enjoyed technical drawing at school, I was neat and tidy and I could draw, it wasn’t necessarily a career path that I chose, but something that I naturally gravitated towards over time.

Working across different industries on different jobs – which were often on-site doing pipework – led me to where I am now. We designed the pipework to be pre-fabricated, so it would all come in by lorry and we could simply fit big sections together, which made the whole thing much quicker.

We will all be sad to see Robin retire. He has been a shining example to anyone as a model colleague that I have personally been fortunate to work with for a number of years. I truly hope that Robin enjoys all the time he will have and I’m sure he will be back occasionally to join us socially. Brian Goldsmith, Regional Director, United Kingdom + Europe

So would you say that you were at the beginning of the pre-fabrication trend?

I think very much so because we just couldn’t see any reasons why not to do it. We drew in schematics and we were drawing pipework to lengths and including the fittings anyway, so I took it a step further so that you could actually construct it and fit it almost completely together. This involved measuring by hand though, so it wasn’t as exact as we can get it these days… You’d always have to have a spare piece that was a bit longer so you could cut it down, but I think we made a lot of inroads into doing it by pre-fabricating both pipework and ductwork to be on-site. It could all be shopped in pre-made rather than being cut down.

Chicago

Have you always been based in London?

Not always. After my apprenticeship, I had a couple of contract jobs as a draftsman, which was a nice hourly rate and allowed you to take jobs abroad, which was beneficial!

First of all, I went to Brussels and loved it. I worked there for several months, before going on to work in both Paris and Rotterdam. This was quite early on in my career, in the ’70s and early ’80s, before I decided to move back to London and the drawing board.

I was still doing various types of contract work for different companies when I then made the move to the States for 3 years. I continued with pre-fabrication on pipework along with a team of British engineers from London – we all went out together – we were quite good chums already.

Firstly, we went to New York and stayed there for about 7 months, checking some drawings and doing odd jobs, before we got sent out near to Chicago. Sometimes we would spend a month doing drawings for isometrics, which were quite slow, because we were doing all of the pump sets, calorifiers and intricate bore pipework – very small and very fiddly!

However, over the first six weeks, we’d spent so long doing all of the intricate work that the rest of it was a lot faster. On some drawings, you might just have one line which was a length of pipe, 2 flanges, 4 bolts and a gasket. They took 5 minutes so we used to do loads of them. You couldn’t copy them back then – we had to draw everything rather than using a printer, so we went from spending days on the previous drawings to doing one every 10 or 15 minutes!

We had a very successful time in the States before coming back to England.

Robin’s ability to identify installation issues early, clearly report them and advise the contractors on resolving was key to ensuring project delivery went as smoothly as possible. This was a great help to me as a project manager and personally, I learned a lot from Robin about identifying issues and clearly reporting and tracking them through to resolution in a way that is fair to all parties. Graham Day, Associate, London

How have you seen the industry change over the years?

Mostly how fast jobs are now. When I started, we’d do a drawing and then the next stage was a team of people printing, folding and posting the drawings out to different stakeholders. Once they’d made their comments and posted them back, we’d change our drawings before issuing them for a second time. That process was a lot longer, whereas now it’s all done in seconds via email and digital programmes.

One of the other main areas is safety on-site. We used to wear checked shirts, with no hats and whatever footwear you wanted! I remember if we needed to get from one side of the site to the other, to save us walking we would wave at the crane driver for a lift. We’d all get in a bucket and the crane would lift us into the air to get where we needed to go… obviously that couldn’t happen now!

The way safety is taught now, it’s embedded in you and almost becomes second nature. There’s a lot to be said for the change in safety on-site.

Site

How did the industry transition from drawing boards to computers impact you?

There was a period in the early ’90s where it was very hard to find work, so I ended up going out to Ibiza for about 3 years and taking a bit of a career break. When I came back, I walked into the office and wondered where all the drawing boards were.

I had to do computer-aided design (CAD) lessons and took courses, but I felt that it wasn’t the same as a drawing board and it wasn’t something that I personally wanted to pursue. That’s when I started going on-site for checks and commissioning. I had some experience of this in the States, so I knew the processes – that knowledge was invaluable when I came back. If anyone wanted a quick sketch, I was your man, but beyond that, I spent most of my time out of the office

What do you see as the main challenges facing the industry in the coming years?

I would say keeping up with the demand for shorter and shorter timescales. With the way things have been going, especially relating to COVID and Brexit, having the infrastructure in place to order and deliver on-site equipment, even some of the utmost basics such as steel and glass, can be very difficult to get. Jobs can easily get held up with a strain on supply chains and materials. So maybe that has to change.

You can’t get everything from the UK – for example, it’s common to source tiles from Italy – but perhaps there should be more of a focus on British industry. Rather than importing steel from abroad, would it be possible to go back to our reputation as one of the best industrial nations in the world?

What advice would you give to a young Robin James starting out in his career?

My number one piece of advice would be enjoy yourself! There’s so much training and information out there, so make sure you find the path that’s right for you. I’ve always enjoyed my work, what I’ve done and the people I’ve worked with.

Robin was really welcoming when I first joined and we worked together. He’s always really friendly with an easy-going personality and is very approachable. Whenever I asked him a question I never felt like it was a stupid question and he’d answer it thoroughly. Laura Billing, Graduate Mechanical Engineer, London

And finally, what do you plan to do now that you’re retired?

Continue to enjoy myself, perhaps take a more leisurely approach and see friends that I haven’t had a chance to throughout lockdown and of course, spend more time with my grandkids, I can’t wait for that!

But I don’t think I’ll ever just be sitting there watching TV – I’ll always be quite active and always available for anyone needing advice.