Third retirement after road well travelled

 The Merseyside shipwright’s son, who explained that he had “attempted unsuccessfully” to retire twice previously, talked HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie through a varied and interesting career, and gave his views on some of the reasons why the UK engineering profession is currently struggling to secure new blood.

An IHEEM member since 1992, and chairman of the Institute’s London branch (which he proudly points out is currently the largest), since April 2009, John Crawford told me, just before he retired, that he had spent the past two and a half years working as senior electrical design engineer at the Edenbridge, Kent offices of building services consultancy the Richard Stephens Partnership. Here projects to which he had applied his considerable public and private sector engineering experience had included project managing the electrical engineering building services for a suite of new operating theatres at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital, including overseeing installation of lighting, small power, low and high voltage distribution, fire protection, nurse call, security and door entry, telephony, and data communication systems. His spell with the Richard Stephens Partnership had also seen him design the electrical, theatre lighting, and main power reinforcement, for the restoration of the Concert Hall at London’s renowned Royal College of Music, and project manage the upgrading of electrical engineering and mains supply reinforcement at several University College London premises. Although his career had seen him secure several senior management roles, he said he still very much enjoyed the “hands-on” side of electrical engineering, and he has a particular, and longstanding, interest in energy management, and technologies such as CHP, which he said he intended to harness in consultancy work on his retirement.

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