Driving through the leafy Oxfordshire countryside, one would be forgiven for wondering what’s left of the engineering industry in England.

While it’s fairly obvious that there’s a lot of farming going on, any evidence of Big Industry is lacking. There are no dark satanic mills, no smokestacks and no lines of workers waiting in line at factory gates to punch in.

And so it was a couple of weeks ago, when I set off in my trusty Honda to visit the home of a Small to Medium-sized Enterprise based in a rather oddly named town just outside the university town of Oxford itself.

I had heard that the director of the company would be an interesting chap to talk to about all things related to machine design, and so I set off through the Shires to find out more about what his company was up to.

After a most enjoyable journey, I finally arrived at the company’s headquarters which was located on a pleasant, yet rather modest, industrial estate, typical of many such places that can be found on the outskirts of English towns.

Certainly, there was nothing that could be called grand about the place. There was no magnificent foyer with marble floors, no brilliant towering glass atrium, and no line of very expensive motor vehicles parked outside.

Notwithstanding the fact, the highly affable director of the company did not keep me waiting in his lobby, albeit that I was twenty minutes early. He greeted me personally, after which he brewed up a rather splendid cuppa before leading me into his conference room where he presented the details of some of the new systems that he had been developing.

I was impressed. Here was a Small to Medium Sized enterprise that had built many machines for a slew of Blue Chip companies too numerous to mention. Many of them were very challenging complex designs, and I was intrigued to learn how the company’s team of engineers had solved the technical issues involved in creating them.

After spending an hour or so at the company, and having enough material to write up a good technical story, it was time for me to bid my adieu to the sociable company director and make my way back home through the leafy English countryside.

Whilst driving, I felt ashamed that I had initially judged his company by its lack of grandeur. For what it might have lacked in that department, it had certainly made up for many times over by its engineering achievements.

I also realised that the lack of evidence of heavy industrialization is not indicative of a lack of engineering here in England. Just because the smokestacks have disappeared, there are still a lot of highly talented folks out there practising engineering in hundreds of Small to Medium-sized Enterprises all across the country.
This comment was originally published in the Engineeringtalk Newsletter