The following few words are a summary of my final few years of working for what had been Marconi Radar Systems Ltd. The majority of the time being spent on the SeaWolf Mid-Life Update (SWMLU) Project. It’s a story of decline in the availability of work, which was mirrored in my contribution. As usual the opinions and errors belong to myself.
At the termination of the Marconi JORN contract in January 1999, having worked on the JORN Project for seven and a half years, our names went on a list for redeployment or scrap. The Company was later sold to BAE Systems Ltd and into Alenia Marconi Systems plc., a joint venture company between The Marconi Company and Alenia Difesa. In April 2005 this venture was dissolved and what was left of the Company became BAE Systems INSYTE Division.
Luckily I finished on a Friday and started work on Monday 11 January 1999 for Ray Wombwell, who was Systems Manager on 743D for the Greek Pilion Radar. The Project Manager was Terry Barnsley. The Project was under a stiff deadline as the Company wanted to trade the radar by the end of the financial year 5th April 1999. My job was to ease the holdups and restrictions that slowed or stopped the Field Services Engineers from achieving final acceptance. This included the provision of equipment from Broadoak Works to meet the contract, clearance of site technical queries and observations, provision of special test equipment and spares. Each week I would go with Chris Simons to Broadoak with a prioritised list of equipment and spares requirements to bring back to Rivenhall. Following ten weeks and many hours of hectic activity, acceptance of the radar was achieved. My next job within the Systems Department was working on Year 2000 compliance of S600 equipment; going through drawings to identify any timing circuits with clocks that could be affected. By the end of May 1999 I had lost the plot, and applied for a job in the Installation Design Department to do some real work within the Mechanical Engineering Systems Department. After an interview with Mike Pickering and Paul Snook I was taken on as a Principal Installation Design Engineer. (Never could understand why an Electronics Company would put Electronic and Electrical Engineers in a Mechanical Dept. Would have thought that Mechanical Engineers should have been attached to an Electrical Dept. as the mechanical aspects had become more electrical over time.)
My first job was the design of the Land Based Integration Facility for the ST1802. This was part of the contract for three ships worth of systems that had been sold to the Government of Brunei. The LBIF was to be located on the beach near Barrow-in-Furness. The design was based on a shipping container that was provided and strengthened by Bradgate Containers at Shepshed following stress point analysis on the design structure. This included the addition of two detachable buttresses on one side. Wiremek at Woodbridge provided the container power supplies. Provision for fitting two Trackers one at each end of the container was provided, with the Tracker below Deck equipment fitted internally. The Project was run from Frimley, and was already suffering from a lack of time, money and a System Design Specification; as someone had not initiated this item of contract at the appropriate time. The customers engineering staff were not involved in the engineering design as required by the contract, a failure of Project Management. Thus when they did involve themselves late in the design cycle, the resultant rejection of the internal design layout was an unnecessary embarrassment to the Project. The redesign to their wishes was undertaken, following a meeting at Frimley to which I was called. They made little difference other than destroy the centre of gravity of the equipped container when lifting. This was to the extent that I felt obliged to add a warning note to the drawings. The last part of the redesign was taken away from me in January 2001 as the Project Manager wanted it to be finished there at Frimley by the Installation Design Office under Mike Haladja since they were running out of work. On my handover of the design I wrote to the Project Manager and Systems Engineer listing all the outstanding redesign issues and items to be finished, including those aspects to be confirmed by the System Design Authority. In the subsequent ‘drain covers up’ enquiry by the upper management, this was used for asking the relevant questions. The running of the LBIF part of the project was a shambles for which the Project Manager and Systems Engineer eventually left the Company under a cloud.
During this time at the end of 2000, possibly the beginning of 2001, I was involved with the installation of a new HF Transmitter into the PortaKabin at Dengie for the HF Surface Wave Radar there. I had Andy McCubbin down from RFI to advise on dummy loads, cabling and filters through the wall. To get the old GEC Marconi Communications Systems (GMCSL) Project Heartbreak HF Transmitter out of the cabin; Mike Drake, Malcolm Burrells, John Knight and myself had to remove the end wall from the cabin, and lift the transmitter out with a crane. The new Alenia Marconi Transmitter (less than a third the size) was then lifted in. An engineer from Alenia Marconi Systems Italy came to commission the equipment. This was the time I had John Crozier (Carpenter) come and build some stands for the coiled surplus cables to the antennae.
From January 2001 to April 2002
I worked on the HADAF Project, where Terry Barnsley was the Project Manager. My job was to liaise with Andrew Piechowiak of Scot Wilson the Civil Construction Engineers at Basingstoke and in Oman, with respect to site and equipment layouts. Although most of the main aspects of the various site locations had already been decided before I arrived.
At Thumrait, after checking the as built elevations of the radar and the Operations Building, I had to have all the air conditioning fans and condensers removed from the roof of the Operations Building and placed in a valley in the adjacent attached roof. This was to limit possible interference with the radar beam, following examination of the radars beam radiation patterns based on the Rivenhall Near Field Test Site results.
At Masirah, the Operations Building that housed the Equipment Container required a temporary roof to be designed by myself; this was commissioned from Mark Butler at James Lawrence Sailmakers Ltd. at Brightlingsea. John M Wells and myself went there to accept receipt of the canopy awning, with roof poles and restraints. To lift the spine and antenna into position on top of the site hill, calculations were modelled, using the topographic drawings and building drawings of the construction company, cross related with the radar mechanical drawings and the crane range and capacity drawings.
It was determined with Ray Wombwell that part of the hill had to be removed due to a limited access road, so that the only suitable large crane on Masirah Island could reach.
I was involved with AB Dick Ltd. of Cheltenham in the provision and layout of Radomes for the 743D radars and the Glass Reinforced Plastic Ground to Air Masts. The masts were at the time some of the tallest GRP structures ever made, and being sited close to the radar needed to be mostly non-conductive. I had an involvement with Dave Davey in what had been GMCSL, on the provision of Tropospheric Scatter sites. During which time the site between Thumrait and Muscat was found to be misaligned by 3 degrees, and the dish ground work fixings had to be moved round. I also went to Oman a couple of times to sort out various design issues at Thumrait, Masirah, Muscat and Salalah, during which time I liaised with Norman Davies.
Seacat Seawolf
In April 2002 I was sent to work for Cliff Nicholson, SWMLU System A Design Authority, to finish the writing of the System A Defining Specification. After a month of working in the SeaWolf Mid-Life Update Project Office, and having placed the specification out for review, I returned back to the Installation Design Department. There I was to lead the design on the SWMLU Facilities, reporting to Dr. Sam Brown. I became the Facilities Electrical Design Authority and the Facilities Electrical Integration Authority from May 2002 to September 2009. This covered the design of the interconnection cables between the various Configuration Items of the SWMLU System, and involvement in the various cabinet mechanical designs. In total there were approximately Qty.150 cables in the Tracker System and Qty.110 cables in the Surveillance system. Ray Strudwick did most of the cable drawing, up to System Design Review. Cable manufacture with Low Smoke and Fume, Zero Halogen cable was undertaken by TYCO Electronics at Swindon, where Dominic Hammond was the Sales Project Controller. Ian Dancey from the SWMLU Project was involved in the production control on behalf of the Company.
There were few cables remaining from the original design, and most interfaces to equipment were new. The interface specifications were not very mature and written in theory, and so the implementation design had to be worked out from first principles and functionality, and then adapted to the design that existed as built. There was also a failure in the Systems Department in recognising that a Configuration Items interface to another CI did not stand alone, and might be combined in an interconnection through the Tracker Below Deck cable termination panel with other unrelated interfaces.
Amongst the new cables to be designed was the fibre optic run from the new Selex camera on the Tracker Above Deck to the video processing cabinet in the Tracker Below Deck. Ed Mouchel, who was the SELEX Design Authority for the camera tracking system, and myself spent a considerable amount of time identifying a type of cable which would meet the rigorous operational requirements for losses and in-service operability, reliability and maintainability. The design could not allow more than five cables within the run, and one of the cables needed to turn through 270 Degrees to allow for azimuth tracker movement and 100 Degrees in elevation of the Tracker Above Deck. The fibre optic cables were covered with abrasive resistant outer sheathing, and following a review by Norman Davies it was decided to cover all optical fibre cables within the Tracker with the same product.
In November 2004 I went to the Communications Electronics Security Group, GCHQ at Cheltenham for a TEMPEST Installation Design Course.
Other members of the Mechanical Systems Engineering Department who worked on SWMLU were Brian Bolton-Knight, Malcolm Burrells, Eric Coe, Duncan Hill, Bob Lewis, Ryan Renshaw, Grant Walker and Barry Woodham.
From 22 January 2007 to 11 April 2008 I provided support for the SWMLU Design as it matured, and the provision of more detailed Level 3/4 design guidance to BAE Systems Fleet Solutions.
From 14 April 2008 to 30 September 2008 I was involved in the design proving of the Type 22 Surveillance Office SWMLU conversion of Outfit DBB (Data Bus B) at Bushy Hill Test Site. Chris Stone the Bushy Hill Site Manager had stored an old Naval display and power supply at my behest a couple of years before, and this was requisitioned to be built into a small system. The North Mark, antenna synchro turning and targets of opportunity data were taken from the GWS25 Mod0 Surveillance Reference Model run by Brian Olley. Graham Breen from Frimley provided the Design Authority input for the existing design of DBB. After a visit to Portsmouth, a spare DBB was rescued from the scrap heap at Broadoak Works and moved to Bushy; to provide spares and be converted. Martin Wager from Field Services provided the changes to the power board in the Tracker Base that was used; and Dave Hardes from Field Services provided the physical corrections to the design as faults and errors were found. Peter Davenport came to look into the software, and aspects of the interface with the remaining existing Winchester Highway.
From 1 October 2008 to 24 December 2008 I supported the SWMLU Design for Type 23 First of Class HMS Sutherland.
From 6 January 2009 to 3 April 2009 I formulated the Installation Design for moving the HMS Fraser SWMLU Tracker to Bushy Hill Test Site; plus, the conversion of Bushy Base E into the SWISS (Sea Wolf In Service System) Reference Model. At this time Trevor Hayden, the ST1802 Design Authority, and myself went down to HMS Fraser before it’s closure to meet the Project sponsors, to discuss moving the lightweight tracker reference model to Bushy. There being no budget to carry this out, the event was put on the backburner. The LBIF facility had been scrapped and there was no appropriate building at Bushy.
This was followed by the formulation of the SWMLU Installation Design for HMS Collingwood, and the SIF (System Integration Facility) site at Portsdown run by QinetiQ. These facilities were each built slightly differently from the ship fits, being more like test sites.
From 6 April 2009 to 29 May 2009 I converted the BVT (BAE Vosper Thorneycroft) Surface Fleet Ltd. ship cable specifications into SWMLU wiring lists for Type 22 First of Class HMS Campbeltown.
Work on SWMLU dried up and so I was assigned, from the 1 June 2009 to 24 December 2009, to the updating and modification of the Company Business Management System Procedures applicable to the Mechanical Systems Engineering Dept. Writing new processes and amending old process specifications for the Dept.
From 4 January 2010 to 26 February 2010 I worked on the Isle of Wight for three days a week, specifying the electrical design for the ARTISAN Simulator Cabinet, which was taken over by Bob Forshaw.
My last job for the Company, from 1 March 2010 to 30 April 2010, was to convert BAE Systems Surface Ships Ltd. cable specifications into SWMLU wiring lists for Type 23 HMS Argyll.
On the 30 April 2010 I retired at 62 years of age from BAE Systems, having applied for voluntary severance. After 39 years and 1 month of working for the remnants of what had been the Marconi Radar Systems Company, this was probably the best career decision that I made, other than going to Australia for four years, August 1991 to August 1995.
It was with relief that I felt that I had escaped from an organization that had been in decline for at least 20 years, since the close of the Cold War. Lack of investment, no British Government commitment, an emphasis on being politically correct, a move away from engineering into managing the programme, subcontracting everything and losing the skill base and capability, the takeover of the bought-in and brought-in careerist who moved on to their next career move, lack of inventiveness with no product champions, all created an atmosphere of decline and low morale. With the recurring rounds of redundancies, I have calculated that I survived 18 rounds in my time; those that remained struggled on.
From c5,500 personnel working across various sites at my start to the day I left there were c350 personnel. In the following twelve years since, that had declined to about 100 people working on legacy products, and the sites have all been closed other than a small corner of the Great Baddow site, the rest has been given over to housing development and light industrial units.
The only compensations were that I was privileged to have worked with some of the cleverest and skilled people that could be found; and the work was both interesting and rewarding for mental and intellectual stimulation, and job satisfaction. Most people were helpful and took pride in their work in the team, and went out of their way to assist; but it was not all sweetness and light. There were a few clowns, fantasists, prima donnas, divas and sociopaths throughout the organisation, probably reflecting society in general. Field Services had a slightly above average of functioning and nonfunctioning alcoholics, this probably reflected the work and life style. Only the Board of Directors let it all down. (Lions led by Donkeys).
However, if you are making vast sums of money selling aircraft and ships, why would you invest in a radar company that soaked up money like blotting paper with little return?