Although it was more than 30 years ago now, Stuart Pattinson has a particularly compelling reason to remember his first day as an engineering surveyor. It was 4 June 1990, and Pattinson was particularly excited that day because it was the first job he’d had that came with a company car. He was looking forward to picking up the red Vauxhall Astra MkII saloon that he’d picked out. But, having travelled that day from his home in Scunthorpe to visit his new employer, and unfamiliar with traffic in Leeds city centre, he arrived 20 minutes late. By that point, his car had already been given to another new hire. It was an exasperating start to what became a hugely fulfilling career at British Engineering Services.
It would take another 15 months, and a couple of pool cars, before the 28-year-old would be able to use his own car. Incidentally, 30 years on, the car (now an Audi A6 estate) remains a vital tool of the surveyor’s work. He regularly clocks up 25-30,000 miles on surveying trips. When we spoke in early January he was about to start a days-long wintry expedition to Scotland and the Shetland Islands, starting with a 420-mile journey to Aberdeen. “It’ll take all day, but I’m the only man available to do the job,” Pattinson sighs.
Celebrating his 60th birthday this month, Pattinson admits that the thought of retirement has crossed his mind – but he still feels he has something to give his job. And he points out that being an engineer surveyor has always been an old man’s job. “To be a surveyor, you have to have experience, and that means that you have got to use stuff, learn stuff, and age along with it,” he reflects.
Despite having started more than 30 years ago, at 28 – then the youngest engineering surveyor the firm had ever had – he was already an old pro, having clocked up more than a decade of industrial work as a qualified worker.
He served a four-year apprenticeship as a fitter in the steel industry. Once his employer stared to outsource one of his favourite tasks – pump and gearbox rebuilds – to an outside contractor, Pattinson moved to a new factory making injection-moulded parts for Toyota and Vauxhall. There he made friends with another ex-steel industry maintenance technician from Sheffield, who later moved on to British Engine as an engineer surveyor, and later still put him forward for the same role. Pattinson’s subsequent interview with the firm’s chief engineer in Manchester involved him explaining the workings of epicyclic gearboxes on 500t overhead cranes, which he’d encountered in his steelmaking days.
Safe to say, Pattinson got the job. And he was soon climbing ladders to examine cranes, of all sorts, as well as many other types of industrial machinery. Early work also took him to Sunderland to examine passenger lifts, which were more of a novelty for him. However, his career-defining specialism in power presses did not begin until much later, in the early noughties, when a vacancy opened up as the previous surveyor was moving on. He is now the only power press trainer there.
A particular incident stuck in his head when he went on a ROSPA training course for toolsetters. Pattinson recalls: “Because I inspect presses, I get to know the operational side of presses, and there is a legal obligation of toolsetters to sign them off. The press industry was and still is male-dominated, and let’s say there was not a guy in the room who would have been a good piano player; they were all missing parts of, or entire, fingers. Toward the end of the course, an HSE officer came into the training room who was a woman; she was dealing with an accident that happened locally the day before that had injured a young toolsetter. One of the students in the course said, “Without being offensive, I don’t see many women in the press industry. What makes you think you know more about presses than me?” She wasn’t offended, but replied, ‘Well, I didn’t start in this industry, but I can do my job; I know enough to do my job, and what I don’t know, I can ask for help from experts. There is nothing that you could say that I couldn’t answer. And, without being rude, if you were all so good at doing your job, and all the rules were being followed, you should still have all of your digits.’ No-one were prepared to challenge her, because she was right. That was my introduction to the press industry.”
He says he has witnessed plenty of danger. “I’ve seen presses explode; a 2t flywheel smashed out of the side when the machine stopped dead, and the energy had to go somewhere. That’s where we come in: opening presses and doing NDT. It is strangely satisfying doing NDT and finding a crack. After having had a customer moaning at the trouble of having to pull apart the machine, I can then say: ‘There you go; look at that.’ And they rely: ‘Blimey. That could have been nasty.’ That’s when people get it.”
Interactions with customers are not always straightforward, he admits. “I’ve been asked, ‘Do you know how much that will cost to fix?’ I’ve been kicked off sites after telling customers I’ll have to condemn dockside cranes. They go all red in the face and tell me to finish my defect slip and get off their site. I keep cool, calm and collected. I am not aggressive; I don’t respond; I explain why I am doing what I am doing, what I found, and the consequences.”
“I’m always happy to put my findings in writing so someone will understand. I’m happy to respond when they ask, ‘Could you just show me,’ or ‘How do I get that repaired?’ People appreciate that you’ve done an examination, and if you find something serious that you’re happy to discuss it and assist them in finding a route to repair.”
He continues: “I get no pleasure in submitting reports to the HSE, but people’s lives could be in danger, so I educate them where it is needed. I do get some that kick against me, saying ‘Other engineer surveyors don’t say this.’ I respond: ‘I can show you the section of the legislation that says how it isn’t supposed to be in the condition it’s in now.’ I didn’t write the law, but I have to apply it. If you get people on side, you can get some really good contacts and clients. They are pleased to see you – you are not the bogeyman, but the one to keep them square and legal.”
Over his working life, Pattinson recalls two major professional achievements. The first came five or six years ago, when he’d had a busy year, with lots of time away from home, covering for colleagues that were off ill. As a result, he was ranked in the top category, ‘outstanding,’ of the company’s performance-related pay scheme.
The second was being named the BES engineer surveyor of the year. “I never expected to be nominated; I just do my job; I’m not one for the limelight. One day, I received an invitation for the awards, so I asked some of the guys I had been training about it, and one of them wrote back, saying, ‘It was me – you deserve it’. I was humbled that one of my colleagues felt I’d done enough to go out of their way to nominate me. I later found out that it was a unanimous decision: wow.”
Over his 30 years, the industry has evolved. The pressure of work has increased, and the equipment has become ever-more electronic. That has its positive sides, reflects Pattinson. “With cranes, it used to be that you would break the crane before you broke a rope. Now, the crane is easier to break, but it can be lighter and smaller because it relies on electronics rather than mechanics. You are taking safety out of the hands of the person that makes it fall – the one with the steering wheel. I’ve seen mobile crane drivers with outriggers coming off the ground. That’s only possible by turning off the override key and holding it off. The electronics doesn’t care if it’s raining, or getting dark. On the safety side, people are the weak link. They can make the wrong decision knowing that it’s wrong, because they think that they can get away with it.”
On the other hand, the ubiquity of electronics has drawbacks too. “We’re getting to the point where lift inspections need to be done with lift engineers. There are so many safeguards to prevent things like people surfing on the top of lifts, that unless you’re an electrician by trade, there’s a danger you’re going to cause a breakdown. I wonder if the lift manufacturers are trying to engineer out surveyors. They want to say, ‘you buy the lift and we’ll do all of the inspections and maintenance’. But then, where’s the impartiality? For inspectors, it’s either safe or it’s not safe. For a maintenance engineer, the client is shouting at me; can I bypass something to make it work? Lifts are far too technical, and what breaks is always the electronics.”
Apart from presses, Pattinson says his favourite machines are mobile cranes. “I’ve done some really big cranes. When we had the contract for Weldex, I examined cranes that helped build the biomass systems at Drax, that built Wembley stadium, the Olympic stadiums. The 1,000t Liebherrs with all of the backstays. I walk up to them, and look up, and my mouth waters in relish. They are proper toys.”