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A 3-day celebration of Lincolnshire's Engineering Past, Present & Future

SPARK! Engineering Festival is back for 2019 and promises to be even bigger and better than in previous years.

For the first time, SPARK! 2019 will incorporate Civil Engineering to celebrate and showcase the marvellous achievements of this discipline. This ties in nicely with the construction of Lincoln’s new Eastern Bypass and the many challenges it presents. The magnificent event setting of Lincoln Cathedral is a Civil Engineering masterpiece in its own right.

Engineering...

the application of scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical, societal and commercial problems to help imrpove people's lives and advance humanity.

Throughout history, engineering has been an integral part of life in Lincoln and the the surrounding area. From the time the Romans built a fortress overlooking the Witham, the creation of the Fossdyke Canal, through the construction of the castle and catherdrl, to the industrial revolution and the "founding fathers" of Lincoln's proud engineering tradition- Nathaniel Clayton, Joseph Shuttleworth, William Foster, Joseph Ruston and Robert Robey- and to today's leading engineering communicty, Lincoln's engineers have applied their knowledge and ingenuity to shape the world.

As you follow our journey through history to the present day, you will see how our local engineering community has developed and continues to flourish. We have world leading people and world beating engineering businesses, teachers, researches and technologisits who are applying their knowledge and skills to innovate, design, create and supply the best engineering people, services and products worldwide.

Let our story spark your imagination as it has insoired thousands of people to amrvel at our engineering acheivements and ingenuity of our local heroes and how they have changed our lives.

-Doctor Paul Taylor

Micrometric make a wide range of components for automotive, aerospace, energy and industrial sectors. We use many different manufacturing techniques but nearly every part includes some sort of laser process - laser etching, laser welding, laser drilling or laser cutting. Innovating new processes keeps us at the forefront of the industry sector. We take on apprentices and offer work experience to local schools.

We employ apprentices for mechanical engineering to use laser processing and other machines. We employ engineers to plan and process jobs and engineers and scientists to innovate new processes and investigate buy or make new equipment. We offer an apprenticeship occasionally in the commercial side of the organisation. 

We offer interesting work with a wide variety of jobs, parts, machines and processes to learn within an exciting industry which is pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

Starting as a local supplier of aluminium windows in 1974, Starglaze is now one of the UK’s premier manufacturers of PVC, Aluminium and Sealed Units. With sales in excess of £19 million, we operate in the retail, trade and commercial sectors, supplying Kitemarked products to approved installers across the country.

From our humble beginnings, we now occupy a 6.5 acre site in the heart of Lincoln, with over 110,000ft² of manufacturing space – including a new £3.2m, 35,000ft² factory and office complex which houses a fully automated aluminium paint line. Despite challenging times, we continue to grow the business year on year. 

Having invested over £5.3m since 2014 in new manufacturing technologies, infra-structure, machinery, products and training we remain focused on our goal to make tomorrow better than today and will continue to develop our business to improve our products, services, customers and people.

We currently employ over 200 poeple at our Head Office, covering a wide ranges of skills from Customer Service Administrators, Data processors, Fabricators, Quality Technicians, Sales People, Installers, Engineers through to specialists in HR, Finance, Management, Logistics and Distribution.

We'd be the first to say that we don't always get it right, but we have been operating in Lincoln for over 40 years and are driven by a desire to make tomorrow better than today! 

We offer stable, long-term employment, our longest service member of the team has been with us since 1981! 

Our mission statement: working hard with valued and committed employees who share our Starglaze family values to enhance customers businesses by supplying a diverse range of high-quality home imporvement products and services that exceed industry standards. 

Our focus: to make tomorrow better than today! 

Our challange: to develop and maintain a highly motivated workforce capable of delivering continual improvements in products, services and standards.

When you consider that we operate in a highly competitive, fast-paced industry which is constantly trying to develop and innovate in order to deliver better products, in shorter lead times whilst maintaining world class service levels, you can understand why we need a highly motivated and capable team of people to help us grow!

British Steel, based in Scunthorpe, have a range of high quality steel products that go into a number of markets around the world. They also have a network of metal centres and service centres across the UK and Ireland enabling them to serve their customers quicker and more efficiently. 

They work in 4 main markets:

• Rail - Rail products and services for high speed, heavy duty, mixed traffic, metro and tramway networks
  
• Sections - Sections for the construction industry. CPR-compliant for current structural design and practice
  
• Special Profiles - Special Profiles for earth moving, forklift, construction, shipbuilding and mining markets.
  
• Wire Rod - Wire rod for the automotive, construction, engineering and consumer goods markets.  

British Steel's brand promise

We want to work with our customers to fully know, understand and meet their needs.

We want to build loyalty in the British Steel brand by being our customers’ first choice supplier, the one they trust, every time.

We will do this by:

• Being agile and easy to do business with – this means being responsive, adaptable, competitive and proactive
• Strengthening existing relationships and creating new relationships – this means being trustworthy, friendly and engaging
• Working together to drive improvements – with enthusiasm and effectiveness that accelerates product and service development
• Doing what we say we will do – this means being reliable and honest

With many recent changes across our business, now is a time to reinvigorate our relationships. We will show everyone that we mean business, that we are here to stay and that by working with our company – British Steel –  we can all be sure of a stronger future.

We have 7,640 talented people in a network of offices across the UK united by our values: collaboration, innovation, pride, and passion for our work. We engineer projects that will help societies grow for lifetimes to come.

Our Lincoln office forms part of the Lincolnshire Highways Alliance Design Consultancy, working alongside Lincolnshire County Council to develop a wide range of ongoing highways schemes including Lincoln Eastern Bypass, Grantham Southern Relief Road, Spalding Western Relief road and the proposed North Hykeham Relief Road.

WSP is proud to support development and growth throughout Lincolnshire; and are delighted to have the opportunity to share our work on the World of Work website.

Leonardo is a global high-tech company and one of the key players in Aerospace, Defence and Security. Employing 45,000 people worldwide with 7000 of those in the UK. Leonardo has six sites in the UK specialising Electronic Warfare, Radar, Helicopters, Cyber and Infra-Red Technology. Our Lincoln site is home to the Leonardo Academy where we train our customers on the latest technologies. Also at Lincoln we have a strong focus on Electronic Warfare Operational Support (EWOS), supporting both UK and overseas customers.

Being a STEM focused company, Leonardo employs a vast range of engineers including; software, systems, controls, hardware, manufacturing, electronics and cyber. Routes into employment with Leonardo are through apprenticeships, graduate schemes and industrial placements. 

In the UK Leonardo spends around £3.5 million on employee training and development annually, providing young people with the opportunity to gain qualifications through on-the job training, whilst simultaneously undertaking academic study. We are also one of the largest employers of engineering apprentices and graduates in the UK with our apprenticeship scheme rated 'Outstanding' by OFSTED. 

Leonardo is also the first aerospace company in the UK to be awarded the Investors in Young People Gold Accreditation award which reflects the company's commitment to supporting young peoples' educational development.

At Leonardo, you are working with some of the latest technology, so advanced that many people don't know about it. Through work with some of the UK’s most renowned universities including Edinburgh, Bristol and Liverpool, Leonardo is investing in future research to maintain the UK’s position as a leader in world-wide technological innovation.

Micronclean, based in Skegness started as a local laundry and has been owned and managed by one family since the 1920’s. At that time, the business concentrated on hand finished laundry services focusing on quality, innovation, attention to detail and customer care. These attributes underpin all the products and services Micronclean now offer which range from our traditional hand finished linen through laundered garment services for both industrial clients and high-tech pharmaceutical companies throughout the UK to cleanroom consumables which are sold in the UK and overseas.

Our ongoing evolution started in the 1970’s when we introduced the first tunnel finisher into Skegness which had the benefit of drying garments using steam thereby doing away for the need for ironing. Tunnel finishers are now the industry standard way of drying garments. We also were the first to introduce Polycotton garments, now the predominant fabric for workwear.

During the 1980’s we built the first cleanroom laundry and we were the first laundry to adopt ISO9001.

The 1990’s saw the introduction of garment tracking and we were the first laundry to use Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology through which we track individual garments in our in-house developed Protrack system.  We remain the only major laundry to scan garments both into and out of our sites. We were the first laundry to adopt ISO14001 environmental standard.

The building of Louth in the 2000’s saw the development of the first (and only) large scale ISO6 cleanroom laundry, Louth’s sortation system remains the most sophisticated in the UK. Alongside this we developed an innovative automotive paintshop garment washing process which remains the most effective for that environment. We achieved Risk analysis and Bio-contamination Control (RABC) accreditation, ISO14065, the first Laundry in the UK and still the only cleanroom Laundry to do this. We introduced a patented Mopping system and multipack syringe packs, both of which have genuinely changed the dynamic of the market.

The current decade has seen the introduction of our alcohol trigger sprays for our clean room consumables customers which have challenged 30 years of received wisdom and have transformed the market place. Our Alpha and Beta disinfectant range have allowed customers to move away from chlorine based solutions which have major problems with health and safety due to the vapour as well as the corrosive properties of chlorine based disinfectants.

Micronclean has a turnover of just over £25m and employs close to 450 people across the UK, the majority of these being based at our three main production sites, all based in Lincolnshire. We have an active Continuous Improvement programme driving business improvement for our customers.

Looking to the future we are confident of growth not only in the UK but also in export markets as we seek to leverage not only our laundered garment service and consumables sales but also use our unique laundry knowledge to deliver business opportunities in overseas markets in line with our mission statement.

Engineering UTC Northern Lincolnshire, is a non-selective, publicly funded school for 13-19 year olds that aims to deliver well-rounded students into the engineering and technology industries through a specialist STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education. With a focus on connecting education to industry, students receive an innovative concept of learning that combines technical, practical and academic learning. By doing so, it provides students with something more than the traditional GCSE and A Level curriculum. Exposing individuals to real-industry projects and industry experts, enables them to progress into their dream careers by gaining the skills, experience, knowledge, qualifications and confidence required by todays employers. 

Opened in September 2015, the ENL UTC £12m campus is set in the heart of Scunthorpe town centre on Carlton Street, close to both bus and train stations. The campus contains some of the most up-to-date, cutting edge engineering, scientific and computer facilities in the country that provide engaging workshop spaces to learn alongside of the theoretical work. 

There are currently around 50 UTCs throughout England that are spearheading a new approach to teaching engineering and technical skills to schoolchildren around the UK. Each UTC has been established where employers need them most and where there are pronounced skill gaps. This is what makes the ENL UTC so unique within the region, allowing the next generation of workers to get much sought after skill sets to make that rapid transition into the workplace. 

As the ENL UTC is currently in it's third year, the school is continuing to grow. At the moment we employ around 28 members of staff including both teaching and support staff. 

Every staff member employed at the school is passionate about not only their job role but also the schools vision and ethos. Staff do not raise their voices, the school does not have an isolation system and we respect the students as much as we would like them to respect us. The ENL UTC is very focused on the individuals and building those relationships. 

From a recent staff survey it stated that 95% agreed or strongly agreed that the UTC was a great place to work, 100% agreed that the UTC has a great vision and that the staff force is well led, and the average staff morale was 8.73 out of 10. 

Our staff members believe that there is a sense of belonging when working at the ENL UTC and due to the unique learning environment it allows them to praise and acknowledge students successes and progression. 

My job role is as the ENL UTC Marketing and Student Recruitment Officer, and I love my job because every day is different. Not only do I plan strategy for the year, manage all digital platforms and arrange literature, I also get to work closely with students and industry partners to create a sense of engagement throughout the community. Every day I am involved in an activity, event, workshop etc. that engages the students to be more involved in promoting their school. 

Recently we have had permission to open the school up to a year 9, meaning that the ENL UTC is one of the first UTCs in the country to be able to do this. 

We are continuously progressing and opening up the campus to new, relevant industry machinery for the curriculum as well as engaging more with the local community, showcasing our student talents. 

What do we do? Barkston Refinishing is a traditional bodyshop. That means that we are able to repair anything that is part of or attached to the vehicle body. This includes bonnets, roofs, glass, wings, doors, quarter panels, boot lids, sills, door mirrors you name it!

All productive staff have been apprentice trained and qualified to city & guilds / NVQ3.

Meet the team:

David (Company Director) has been working on cars since the age of 11 when he first got behind the steering wheel of a 1956 Morris Isis and learned to drive around the yard at the family home. Apprenticed in 1971 for five years and still learning 37 years later , proud to have worked with some real tradesmen. During that time the job has seen many changes mostly good, but sadly some things not so. Every day brings a new challenge, sometimes frustration, but always satisfaction and pride.

Andy has shadowed his brother Dave since he left school with a few variations of employers but shares the same love of the job. He joined Barkston Refinishing in May 1983 and celebrates 35 years with the company this year.

Paul son of David was born to spray. Loves to paint something different and wants to hear from you! Normally nobody sees the efforts of his labour as his job is to repair the car so that no one can tell its been done. Give him something different to do and make him happy!

Rosemarie married David in 1977 and still loves him. – what a woman! Rosemarie mans the office on a Friday and generally looks after the money. She is a pussycat most of the time but is feared in accounts departments and by debtors who dare to exceed our credit terms without telling her

Adam has loved classic cars every since he was 11 when he built a 1976 Triumph Spitfire 1500 from a bare shell upwards and every since he was ready to do anything with a car from learning how to paint it to how to do bodywork on it from welding to panel beating, Adam is our apprentice, joined in September 2016 and is making a good start to his career