Paul started his career in engineering in 1988, with a four year technician apprenticeship with GEC Traction at its Trafford Park headquarters.
Following the completion of his apprenticeship, Paul took the position of a Laboratory Technician in the now renamed GEC Alsthom Traction’s engineering laboratory, based at its Preston headquarters. In this role Paul was working within the electrical division covering product type testing, environmental testing, mechanical testing, EMC testing and product failure investigation of rail traction equipment. From this Paul was then promoted to Technician Engineer status to lead all aspects of the validation of its newly formed company ALSTOM Auxiliary Converters Ltd. During this time Paul completed a five year part-time degree course qualifying highest in the year and was awarded the IEE Institution Prize for distinction on the course.
On graduation in 1997, Paul took the position of Design Engineer, then Lead Design Engineer within the ALSTOM Auxiliary Converter Business. Paul led the design on many auxiliary power supplies for use on all types of rail vehicles including trams and trolleybuses in the power range of 10 to 300kVA, for both AC single/three phase applications and DC battery charging systems. In 1998 Paul took the opportunity to participate in a one year engineering exchange programme working in Belgium on the design of a 265kVA auxiliary converter for use on a metro style vehicle for the Singaporean Government.
In 2000 Paul took the position of Research and Development engineer with a small privately owned electronics company in Manchester, specialising in the design of switch mode lighting power supplies for the use in film and television industry. These lighting power supplies covered the range of 100W to 18kW and provided supply for both AC and DC lighting equipment.
In 2004 Paul moved to Rolls-Royce to take the role of Principal Engineer within its Distributed Generation Systems (DGS) business at its Cheshire headquarters. The company’s primary customer is the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD); hence all equipment designed has to meet the widest range of operating environments especially with regard to temperature, induced mechanical stress and the Electromagnetic environment. In this role Paul led the design and validation of electrical power generators, distribution systems, auxiliary power units and electric drives for military vehicles. Paul’s primary role during his time with Rolls-Royce was the development of the next generation military power generation system, utilizing variable speed technology (power electronics) to provide a power dense highly fuel efficient solution to mobile power generation in the sub 50kVA power range.
Paul joined Hawkins in 2013 and is a Senior Associate based in our Manchester office.
