PEOPLE
Newly-elected vice chair
Phil Bateman, a 40-year
engineering design veteran,
has a passion for solving
what may seem initially to
be impossible problems,
and creating innovative
products, through ideation
Mr Possible
Many designers would
recognise the situation
of being asked to t a
quart into a pint pot,
or break the laws of
physics in order to be rst to market with
the next most innovative ground-breaking
product ever seen, Phil says. And in
some cases this has been achieved
through teamwork and cross functional
collaboration with some very clever design
engineers. A couple of examples that
come to mind would be:
Being challenged to reduce the thickness
of a mobile phone below 9mm, when the
camera to be integrated was 11mm
Seal any plug cable from an appliance
used in an outside socket against a jet of
water (engineered ‘silicone implants’ were
the solution, following a cross-functional
brainstorm)
Can you get that amount of air to ow
through a device without creating sound?
Having always been practicallyminded,
Phil left school at 16,
choosing a ve-year indentured design
apprenticeship with material testing
machine manufacturer WH Mays & Son
in Windsor. (He remains an advocate of
apprenticeships if the business has the
facilities to support the individual, to give
the best all-round experience).
Phil has then continued a career path
of increased operational and nancial
responsibility, designing, managing
and directing mechanical, electronic,
software engineering, product design
and manufacturing functions for a range
of SME and multinational organisations
across the telecommunications,
manufacturing and defence sectors.
On completion of his apprenticeship in
the early ‘80s just as CAD (computer-aided
draughting) was emerging, he moved to
Keeler Optical Products
who had invested in
the technology (Pafec
Dogs) alongside the
drawing board which
he had used up until
this point. Looking
back, he was lucky
to have joined at
the point in which the
company was redesigning its range
of Vista ophthalmoscopes, introducing
him to plastic injection moulding. A
particular highlight was being in the team
that designed one of the company’s rst
handheld puff tonometers to check for
glaucoma.
From there, he moved to MK Electric,
where his career started to move into
design team leadership. After completing
a diploma in management, he moved
to the UK of ces of an expanding
telecommunications rm in 1996 called
Nokia, where he would ultimately stay until
the rm was sold to Microsoft in 2012.
There was great excitement at Nokia;
the technology was moving so quickly,
Phil recalls. The designs of phones
changed every six months. There was
a huge challenge with speed to market
Phil Bateman, right, is
awarded his badge of o ce
by Colin Ledsome
and technology advancement; form
factors were changing all the time. The
design process and methodologies were
challenged to speed up design, utilizing
emerging manufacturing process such
as rapid prototyping, soft tooling, FEA,
witnessing tooling times tumble from 26
weeks to 10 weeks. That was in addition
to some amazing design engineers and
teamwork, without whom some of the
impossible may not have been realised,
he adds.
Since then, Phil has worked for
ventilation equipment manufacturer
Volution (corporate parent of Ventaxia),
and latterly at consumer products
group Conair (Babyliss), as director of
technical and consumer affairs, which,
Phil explains, brings together the voice of
the consumer, quality and engineering to
improve the design of products.
Having joined the IED in the early
1980s as a student, encouraging others
to become professionally registered and
others to enter engineering design, Phil
was invited to become a member of
Council over a decade ago. When asked
what motivated him to vice-chair position,
he replies: “It’s about helping others
see design engineering as a fantastic,
exciting, rewarding career, and being
able to inspire, support and help new
engineering designers achieve their full
potential, as I remember friends and
colleagues inspiring and supporting me
in this ever-changing, smaller and more
connected world we live in.”
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