Company Values

Venkat Ayyala

Regional Manager, TWI India

Adaptability

Ever since COVID 19 started, our sales numbers started to dip. Venkat had adapted to the situation and strived to bring the sales up by strategizing new plans like online classes, discounts to candidates etc. He motivated and grooved the entire team, worked hard to bring together all the departments, arranged weekly calls to extend full support and ensured that we made good profits while globally all the countries are struggling. This is with respect to business on one hand. On the other hand while everyone were working from home, he empathised with the employees especially women employees who had dual roles to play both at home and at office. He allowed flexible workings hours, extended financial support in the form of granting salary advance for COVID affected staff and arranged for Oxygen Concentrators for staff families affected due to COVID. For few staff families, he also helped in arranging hospital beds through known contacts. It is the thoughtfulness and generosity of this person that has empowered the entire team to give in their best.

Stuart Lewis

Principal Project Leader

Inclusion

I recently suffered an unexpected bereavement in my family, which lead to a challenging period. Stuart stepped up to provide brilliant support, filling in for me in meetings that I could no longer attend and calling to make sure I was OK. It was more than I could have asked of a colleague. I hope to be able to offer similar support to others that find themselves in that situation. Thank you Stuart for your kindness and understanding.

Nick Farrant

Senior Technician

Customer Focus

For many years Nick has been supporting and managing the boiler spine Guided Wave inspections at EDF Hartlepool and Heysham1.Nick puts in countless hours ensuring that the jobs go as smoothly as possible - he creates all the inspection files, curates the paperwork and deals with issues between EDF, Eddyfi and TWI. He is greatly respected by EDF. Nick does everything in the background for this client. Nick also goes above and beyond his role with supplying assistance to the team who are on site conducting inspections - Evenings or weekends Nick still answers queries and has the ability to foresee potential problems and rectify them in advance. He is committed to processing and submitting the data in the form of reports to EDF within a very short timeframe meaning EDF have the ability to keep their reactors in compliance with the government safety case to continue keeping them switched on. This fast turnaround is essential to EDF operations. The quality of the work supplied to the client is excellent.

Kath Millard

Information Scientist/ Abstractor

Customer Focus

During a conversation with a client, I referenced a couple of TWI Documents from the 1970s, and indicated that I would ask the Library to send these to the client. I did so, and within 30 minutes of my request, Kath had sent the relevant documents to the client. This type of speedy support has pleased the customer immensely, and demonstrates excellent customer focus.

This was particularly important, as during the conversation with the client, they were concerned about when they were going to receive the documents, and asked whether they could contact me to chase it up if they had not received the documents within a week. No chasing needed, as Kath had already done the job!

Carl Forrest and Ben Forrest

Carl – Senior Technician
Ben – Technician

Customer Focus

Father and son duo, Carl and Ben Forrest have continued to come into work on a daily basis to deliver the X-ray Computed Tomography system scanning for the ongoing Rolls-Royce Engine set inspection work since COVID lockdown from March last year. This job is a production inspection job and as such includes the stresses of production delivery i.e. 66-99 blades a week. Carl and Ben strived to maintain this throughput despite many challenges along the way, e.g. COVID19 restrictions, equipment failure, contradicting component forecasts and delivery, support required for other projects. In the early days Carl and Ben were amongst the only ones working in the laboratory and as such inherited other tasks too (e.g. receiving goods, supporting remote colleagues) adding to their workload. However, they accommodated all these extra activities on top of the production inspection job without complaint.

Ian Newman

Project Manager

Customer Focus

Working together, TWI and the Rolls Royce Manufacturing Innovation Team have taken great strides in improving the management of the interface between their organizations. This has enabled TWI to better map Rolls Royce’s needs and hence become an integral part of their innovation team. The upcoming projects represent significant leaps in manufacturing capability for the UK as a whole, and so TWI remains immensely proud to be a trusted advisor as well as a reliable contributor. It takes a whole team effort, with fluid communication and cooperation between stakeholders ranging from senior Rolls Royce engineering leaders through to expert TWI scientists and technicians. Together we move forward as one. I am privileged to be part of the growth of this relationship.

Jenny Crump

Senior Project Leader

Customer Focus

Jenny strives to deliver what her customers want. She puts in long hours and often goes "above and beyond" in order to ensure that TWI can deliver what the customer requires. One instance of this is that she has developed new test fixtures and test methods in the corrosion lab, which have required her project management and engineering expertise, as well as a lot of perseverance to ensure that they work properly and will produce high quality results. Her work demonstrates her commitment to delivering to her customers.

Victoria Beckett

Diversity, Inclusion and Communication Lead

Inclusion

Why: for just being open and honest about mental health and wellbeing, and encouraging others to acknowledge mental health issues and show people that is OK to say 'I'm not OK' sometimes.

Respect!

Xing Sun

Principal Project Leader

Customer Focus

Xing makes the effort to develop good relationships with his customers. Through understanding their requirements, he has developed several new test methods. His perseverance has improved TWI's capabilities and resulted in a number of single client projects with satisfied, returning customers.

Ben Robinson

Team Leader

Teamwork

I wish to nominate Ben for the Teamwork value as he is always willing to help, even when he is under immense pressure himself. I always know that he has my back, and see him demonstrate the teamwork value tirelessly, every single day! He is always focussed on what is the right thing to do for the team, rather than himself, whether that is at section level, or in his role as the Chair of the SCC. 2020 brought us the Covid pandemic, and Ben stepped up to the mark and beyond it, supporting friends and colleagues across the business as we went through three rounds of redundancies. To see his dignity and respect in supporting others throughout the whole process is nothing short of remarkable. I have had the pleasure of working alongside Ben since he joined us on summer placement in 2011, then as an EngD student before graduating and joining us as a PL. From day 1, he has always been supportive, from the 'crisis management' of that summer project, through to day to day technical projects, and also on a personal level. He is someone who I know I can trust and rely on. I am proud to work alongside him as part of our team! He is an asset to TWI.

Thanks Ben!

Shane Hill

Senior Technician

Adaptability

Shane worked continually throughout the lock down in 2020, to ensure that resonance fatigue testing projects were delivered. As well as adapting to working in a much smaller team than usual (sometimes largely on his own), he also expanded his role to fill the gaps left by the project leaders not being on site, and did extra things like providing photographs of test specimens, scanning handwritten documents etc.

This ensured that we were able to continue to deliver high quality work to our customers, whilst keeping everyone safe by allowing project leaders to avoid coming on site.

Guy Hughes

Team Manager

Adaptability

Guy has positively provided advice, guidance and support to both colleagues and the business - especially when 'change' is at the core of the matter. As a project manager, Guy's training and attitude is an exemplar of how we all could better approach change. Examples of Guy's positive contribution include: - identification and support of contract changes in large projects; - support of colleagues in the business faced with redundancy and change of role; - continuous change in the delivery of the building projects at Cambridge and Middlesbrough; - identification of changes that the business must face up to in order to perform better ... and he does the above with a positive can-do attitude. Guy looks for: ways to resolve a problem, the opportunities presented and how things could be done better in future - all in a non-judgemental fashion and by working, with rather than through, people.