Have you ever read Nevil Shute’s Trustee From The Tool Room? When I read it, I was extremely impressed with his description of the engineering elements in his plot. Surely this book was not the result of a novelist doing some engineering research, but an engineer who had turned their hand to writing fiction.

It turns out that Nevil Shute was an aeronautical engineer who had a hand in the R100 airship (not the R101 that exploded) and went on to be involved in the design of WW11 RAF aircraft.

I’m glad that my intuition was correct and that I had identified his engineering heritage through his writing.

About me

My own career started, in the back streets of Birmingham, at 16, with a 4-year apprenticeship at electrical manufacturing engineers Field and Grant. My first year was spent at college full time completing a general engineering course that included machine shop processes, sheet metalwork, welding and fabrication. This course proved to be pivotal as my career developed.

My apprenticeship continued with working in every department of the company which manufactured motor control panels and electrical distribution boards. These were used in a plethora of industries in which I had to develop a working knowledge for each project in which I was involved. Customers included British Nuclear Fuels, British Steel and Cadburys. Field and Grant was slow in adopting the emerging technology which incorporated programmable logic controllers as my traditional apprenticeship ended.

I decided to forge a new career in marketing manufacturing control systems running on DEC and Data General hardware. OD Systems engaged a PR consultancy to generate editorial coverage in the relevant trade and technical press. They wrote some lovely words but were most often factually incorrect leaving me to edit them. Eventually, I convinced the MD to drop the PR agency and let me take the task in-house. Thus started my 12-year career in PR.

I left the IT sector to work in PR and marketing consultancies across the midlands. Practically all my clients have been technical and industrial businesses with diverse products and services being sold into a vast range of markets.

My origins in engineering shortened the time that it took me to understand clients’ products, services and markets and I quickly earned the respect of clients and their customers. On occasion, I even offered advice on product development!

I spent some time out of the PR sector undertaking some amazingly fulfilling work, but now I’m back!

What has changed in the intervening time? In some ways not a lot, businesses are still making products and selling them, buildings still start with digging a hole in the ground and electricity still flows through cables to make things move.

In other ways things are unrecognisable, many of the trade journals have gone and on-line platforms are the go-to for information to solve technical and industrial design and production issues.

Unlike Field and Grant that didn’t embrace emerging technology, I have returned to the PR and marketing sector fully armed through taking up education and training opportunities in digital marketing, social media, website design and search engine optimisation.

I have put these skills to work in the background, creating websites for charities and successfully promoting local music events through social media for almost ten years.

Now, 25 years after publishing my first website, I’m ready to return to technical and industrial PR and have launched Tech PR as a brand to promote my work.

You won’t find a plush office suite and a big car; you will find an engineer who can understand your products and services and your customer’s use. Someone who can write intelligently, accurately and positively about your business activity, and get that writing published in traditional and digital media to promote and build your business.

I am also open to working with agencies and consultants to research and create content for their clients’ accounts.

Nevil Shute was an engineer who turned to writing fiction, I’m an engineer who turned to writing nonfiction.

My business logo combines the technical drawing pencil which I picked up when I was 16 years old, with the latest digital technology.

I’m back to Engineering Words under my banner of Tech PR