Manufacturing Leaders

Will Wallace: The Customer Is KING

• Mark Bracknall • Season 10 • Episode 1

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Discover the secret to transforming client relationships and refining leadership skills with insights from Will Wallace, the General Manager of Soil Machine Dynamics. Whether you're curious about shifting from bespoke services to productized offerings or eager to enhance your leadership techniques, this episode promises to be a treasure trove of actionable advice. Explore how these strategies not only streamline operations but also bolster customer satisfaction in the rapidly evolving fields of manufacturing and engineering.

Tracing Will's intriguing career path from an aircraft engineer in the Royal Navy to a significant role in manufacturing engineering, we uncover the vital lessons learned along the way. Experience the challenges and triumphs of transitioning industries, and the critical role early leadership experiences played in shaping Will’s current approach. We discuss the nuances of managing organizational change, focusing on effective communication and overcoming resistance to innovation. These insights are invaluable for those navigating the complexities of business diversification today.

Finally, step into the world of cutting-edge subsea engineering with Soil Machine Dynamics’ groundbreaking underwater technologies. From remote operated vehicles to trenchers, understand their pivotal role in industries ranging from oil and gas to green energy. With advancements in AI and autonomous systems redefining possibilities, learn how the integration of gaming technologies is attracting a new wave of talent, ready to tackle the challenges of tomorrow. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology and client service excellence.

Please subscribe to the channel for more content! Theo James are a Manufacturing & Engineering Recruiter based in the North East, helping Manufacturing and Engineering firms grow across the UK. Please call us on 0191 5111 298

Speaker 1:

Do you have a service level agreement with your clients and all those service level agreements actually signed. Today we talk about that and so much more, behind the client being king. My name is Mark Bracknell, I'm the Managing Director of Theo James Recruitment and today we welcomed on Will Wallace, the General Manager from Soil Machine Dynamics. We talk about everything regarding the importance of prioritizing the client, understanding the client's needs and then, ideally, creating a productized service and a service level agreement behind. Those have really accelerated over the last 12 to 18 months with their client base and retained their client base. In a world where there is so much competition for cost, this is the exact time to double down on your customer service and double down what you can do from the client. So we talk about that in great detail and actually the challenge going from a bespoke type service to a almost off-the-shelf product type service and how beneficial that can be if done correctly, and we'll talk about that in detail. So, as I say, you're going to learn a lot from this one and so much more around product type services, around making change in your business and getting people on the journey with you along. Everything else we talk about which is manufacturing and engineering related the future of engineering, the challenges, the opportunities and everything else in between.

Speaker 1:

I love this episode and you're going to learn so much, so please sit back, grab a coffee and watch or listen. Please, please, please, just click that little like and subscribe button now. It honestly means the world to me and really helps us grow the show, so I'd be forever in your debt if you wouldn't mind doing so. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the episode Right. A massive, massive, warm welcome today to Will Wallace, the General Manager of Soil Machine Dynamics, the second person we've had on with SMD. We had Liam not so long ago and this is the first recorded episode of 2025. So welcome, will. How are you doing?

Speaker 2:

Yes, I'm fine, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for having us on, yeah really looking forward to it and some real specific niche of what we're going to get into today, which I can't wait. But the first question is the same question I ask everyone, which is what does it mean to you to be a leader?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a really good question, mark. For me, being a leader is, I think, somebody that people look up to, and they look up to that person for help, guidance, steering, and I'm very much a kind of person that wants to help people and I want people to thrive and I want people to achieve, you know, what they can and make the most out of themselves, and so I think being a leader, as well is about identifying who the people are who work for you and how you can develop those people, how you can, you know, improve them and make them work to their strengths. But you know, and for me as well, being a leader is showing an example. So, you know, making sure that you know you set an example in terms of how you behave, that you set an example in terms of how you behave, and I think people tend to follow, because they see you in a position that they want to follow and they want to aspire to.

Speaker 1:

I completely agree. I think I've always. My motivation has always been trying to lead from the front, which I think in itself has its own pressures, I think, because if you want to set the example, then you always feel like you've got to be bully-proof to some extent, and other people think their job is purely to delegate and hire the right people and get out of the way. It's probably a bit of both. Do you ever feel that pressure, I guess, to keep that up?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a difficult one, I think, sometimes, when the pressure's on you, it's how do you make sure that you get that pressure delegated down and make sure that you don't put people under too much pressure or you get what you need out of it? And you know, sometimes you have to. You know, depending on the person, depending on the on the, on the situation you have to have, you have to take a bit of a tougher lane and and you know but. But I think you've got to explain things in the context. I think communication is key. I think, if you can, if you can explain to people things in the context, I think communication is key.

Speaker 2:

I think, if you can, if you can explain to people you know the outcomes that you want to achieve and the reasons why you need to achieve it, I think it goes. It goes a long way. Um, instead of just you know, here's a task, get on and do it. Um, you know, without knowing what the wider context of that task is, it's more difficult to bring people on board. But I think if you can explain the context of what you're trying to achieve, it makes it easier and I've found that has really helped in, you know, previous situations.

Speaker 1:

Do you think your leadership style has changed throughout the years if you look back when you first started out?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it has. I think I do look at myself in terms of. I'm always kind of critiquing myself. You know, did I make the right decisions there? Have I made the right? You, you know, have I been slightly harsh there? Have I? You know, I do always critique myself in terms of. Every day is a different learning experience and I think, when you, when you are dealing with people, people also have very different lives and challenges and things going on in the lives and I think you, you've got to understand that, um, and and if, if you, if you can understand how, how somebody ticks and how they, how they process things, and you, you can, you can almost talk on their wavelength and get them to, to understand what you're requiring better, by tuning into their world, if you like.

Speaker 1:

Do you think your style and the way your manager's been influenced by managers you've had in the past? Do any stand out to you? To go? Actually, some of the stuff I do.

Speaker 2:

One of the standout things I always remember is it's almost like the art of negotiation. I think the thing I've learned is yourself, you would have a starting point and the person you're talking to has a starting point. If you can understand where those starting points are, I think it's easier to reach somewhere in the middle. But I think the thing for me it's understanding each other's starting point and knowing where it is. You know whether that be, you know if it's a commercial negotiation, where your standpoint is commercially, I don't have to offer you something. But you know, clearly I'm not going to do that because I don't want to upset you, yeah, but they're going to have an expectation of something that maybe you can't give them. But there's somewhere in the middle and I think that one of the standout things for me is that negotiation piece and understanding why they're starting where they're starting from and try, and you know, convey to them why you're starting where you're starting from. It makes it easier to come to a middle point.

Speaker 1:

So it's almost the psychology for you is the part that you find interesting it is yeah, yeah, definitely yeah, because everybody's different and everybody's got different.

Speaker 2:

Everybody's got different needs, everybody's got different ideas, viewpoints and aspirations. You know it, people are very, very different, and when you're working with people and if, in order to get the best out of them, you've kind of got to tune in into what, what makes them tick, if you like yeah, there's so many theories out there that I find fascinating.

Speaker 1:

I've got the book where everyone's a different color as well. I read that a while ago.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, it makes sense yeah it, it does when I guess. For me, I feel as though if you, if you, if you read literature like that, you, you're almost, you're almost doing it, and then you're recognizing that you're doing it by reading the literature afterwards yeah, no, it's fascinating.

Speaker 1:

I'd like to just go back briefly to because you know you. You've had a tremendous career. Smd are an amazing business. For me, they've been a standard business in the Northeast for many years and will continue to do so with what they've got, and you've been there what 15 years coming up, I think it's just clicked over the 16-year mark.

Speaker 1:

16 years, yeah, so it's been a while. What I mean, if you think about where you are today did you think this is where you'd be? Was manufacturing engineering? Was that always the plan for you? Or going back when you first started out, how did you start?

Speaker 2:

So I started my career. I was an aircraft engineer in the Royal Navy and, to be fair, being a leader was kind of forced upon us at a young age and, you know, at the age of kind of 2021 I was. I was, you know, um, supervising and and leading people and and, you know, you're kind of thrust into it at a very, at a very early age and but and that you know in terms of leadership and things. You are taught that and you're taught the theories and everything you know at a very early age and I think that give us, give us a good grounding for for how to be a leader, how to be you know, how you're seen and how you, how do you get people motivated and how do you get people to come on board with the ideas and the direction that you want to go? So I spent 12 years in the Royal Navy and decided, you know, to have a career change, be close at home and things like that, and I ended up in manufacturing. It was just because I wanted to stay kind of in the in the kind of engineering sector, um, and I I ended up on the role as a manufacturing engineer at ba systems when they were at scotswood road and that really was my kind of first introduction to to manufacturing and help, you know, building of the, the armored vehicles and things like that, and I felt as though, when, when I um, when I done that because I had the engineering background and I had the, the um, the knowledge of how things went together and how they should go together in a particular sequence of things, and I found that I kind of took to it quite easily and understood it very, very quickly, and so I spent around about six years at BA Systems really learning more that the manufacturing side of things and one of the things I'm really you know that give us a good ground was, um, like the product management side of things. Yeah, um, how do you, how do you manage a product and how do you that? And really, what, what interested in what, what? What I got a grasp of was it was if you had changes, how did you manage that change? How you know, how did you?

Speaker 2:

And with it being um a defense industry there was, it was very, very um stringent. It was lots of um things you had to follow and and everything was it. It linked to my, my initial military career, where everything had to be checked and double checked, it had to be raised, it had to be, you know, exactly right. So that that that gave gave me a really good grounding in manufacturing, which then led to my move to my current employer, smd, where I started life as a production engineer building the launch and recovery systems. So I got a real good flavour with that of how things worked on the shop floor. I got, you know, exposure to clients, exposure to engineers, and I got a real good overall experience of how SMD worked really. So that led on to, you know, various different promotions.

Speaker 2:

I became a project engineer for a key client. So I was very customer focused and it was one of our, you know, top clients. So you know it was going around and trying to say to people we need to do this because it's our, you know our number one client. We've got to, we've got to react quickly on this. And it was going around standing at people's desks getting things, getting things working, getting things happening. And then really after I've been at SMD, I think for around about kind of six years, that's when I got my first kind of direct management role. So I started managing people again and started off quite small, with a team of three and but you know, over over the kind of years that's, that's grown and grown and with my success within the service business and I've managed to, you know, progress through the, through the different management structure, and get to kind of the, the GM role and services where I am today yeah, what would testament to you for all the hard work, and testament to the, the business, to give you those opportunities?

Speaker 1:

you know, I think absolutely absolutely behind your hand, aren't they? Yeah, yeah you mentioned um the products piece and the fact you know that that the the change and the management of change, and that's obviously something you're you're very passionate about. That. I think it's about time because I think what I'm seeing now in in manufacturing, engineering, is I'm seeing a lot of businesses pivot and you know, look what else they can do and look at.

Speaker 1:

You know, look at their portfolios you know, look at what they're producing and can they do something different. You know, managing change is never easy in a business. You know it's a difficult, but it's obviously something you've done for a very long time.

Speaker 2:

What's your sort of mantra or sort of mindset or, I guess, process you go through but behind looking to change something like that in a business, would you say yeah, I, I think that the the thing for me is um, if you are wanting to change things there's, there's a couple of things that I look for is, I think, one you've got to. You've got to um, make everybody that's involved with it understand what the outcome is, what you, what you're actually trying to achieve. Um, naturally, people are adverse to change. They're quite late doing what they do and they don't, like you know, deviating from that, and it's just a kind of natural thing. But I think, if, if, if people are aware of what the overall outcome is, it makes it easier to bring people on board and make them make the shift.

Speaker 2:

And I think you haven't got to be sometimes too over ambitious. You have to, you have to you know, know what your capabilities are and work within the capabilities. Sometimes there's frustration, sometimes there's hurdles you have to overcome, but I think you've got to take it in bite-sized chunks and you've got to move through it in a staged plan process, because if you don't, it just gets kind of lost in the day-to-day noise. Um, and and I think for change as well is, is you, you've always got to look at it like a plan do, check, act, cycle as well. Plan the change check, do it and then and then, if there's any tweaks or changes needed to do it, put it back through the cycle again, just to make sure what you're doing is right in every in a. In a complex business, and a small change in one area can lead to a knock-on effect somewhere else, especially if everything's interlinked. So you've got to be really careful that there's no unintended consequences from changing things as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, keep you up at night, that stuff. I guess I'm also seeing a lot of businesses go through a possible stage where a lot of their it might be bespoke or one-offs and they're looking to either do higher batch work or they're looking to sort of transition their portfolio a little bit to sort of more broader products. Are you seeing that as well?

Speaker 2:

so so what? What? What we're trying to do is look at so. So we, we have um, always traditionally um, built contract by contract and and we haven't really looked at our projects as product. So we see a massive benefit in productising some of our production offerings, because it comes a lot of benefits to that.

Speaker 2:

And now one thing with looking at productizing something is you the advantages and the outcome is is you want and you want to be um, you want to reduce the lead times of the, the equipment you're offering, and you also want to try and get some efficiency and savings on it. Now, if you, if you're doing that, then you're going to have to do things like um, have everything done in place and and everything that goes around that product is is in place. So all of it, like the training manuals or manufacturing record books, or the technical spec or the drawings or the abilities, everything comes from that particular product that needs to be like stable and you don't. The one thing you don't want to do is change, because if you, for example, have a price break because you're going to forward purchase a number of units to be able to cut down your lead time and realise the efficiencies, any change leads to extra work. Yeah, it leads to extra work, yeah, and at least extra work in terms of even I have to start changing the manuals, the tech specs and all of these things that go with it.

Speaker 2:

So you need to limit change. So, if you put the product into in there, into the production arena, you need, you really need to have a real sound new product in production and when does it start becoming a product? And when do you? When have you flushed out all of the prototype problems, if you like? And and that's something we, we, we haven't really touched upon smd because we the the prototype side comes because you're building bespoke things, yeah, building products. You've got to have a different mindset as to what change means. It's got to be carefully considered and controlled because the downstream actions are quite extensive.

Speaker 1:

Does it become easier for you know your business development managers to sell? Do you think as well?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely yeah. Of course it does, because if you think about it, if you're offering, you know, it's a little bit like the car configurator analogy.

Speaker 2:

If you go to the garage and you want a completely bespoke um yeah. Car, they're going to say you can have it, that's no problem, but that's gonna that's. You're going to be on a four or five month waiting list for that. I'm sorry, but if you want something really similar, you can prepare the compromise on x, y and z. We can get you that one and it'll be ready in, you know, two days time yeah and and it.

Speaker 2:

It depends what the driver is. If you're wanting the absolute bespoke thing, then then yeah, you can still have that, that's no problem. It's just that that's gonna that's gonna take a a lot longer. But if you want something that's that's there available and you're prepared to, you know, accept that a standard offering, then you can have that a lot quicker. And I think that's where the that's where it'll come my, my um. The key to this for me is is is if you have a, a product here, an rov, that your standard offering and your standard configurator parts to that cover the widest broad demand for customers. And if you do that, so say if you I don't know you might have four, four different um, you know cameras on the front or and, but if you can limit that to try and cover the industry standard, then it makes it a lot easier.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I suppose in a world where automation is improving, you know, and it's harder to find good skills, I guess that should go hand in hand in the sense that you know, that challenge is alleviated a little bit by that to some extent.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because if you do have product, um, it makes it easier for you to produce things like manufacturing instructions. Yeah, you, you only have to put the effort into the first set of manufacturing instructions and then it will cover x amount of units. Yeah, whereas when you're doing that bespoke you're doing, you'd end up doing a manufacturing instruction. Then you'd rip that one up and start again for the next one and it just becomes so inefficient, whereas if you're doing it for a product, it's all about doing it once. Produce many. Yeah, that's where you get the savings in the efficiency.

Speaker 1:

Do you think there's something to say as well, once you've productized your, your services, that it can help in terms of the on the client base when you you know you press press a button on a?

Speaker 2:

contract and it's built to order. You know you're at the whim of what your your longest lead times are on the parts, whereas if you, if you push the button and you you've got the supply chain charged. I mean not necessarily that you've got um things sitting on the shelf, but if, if, if your supply base know that you're going to be building I don't know 10 of these a year, they'll be up for that and they'll have, they might have the raw materials ready or that you know there's a, if you can demand, forecast and and be able to charge your supply chain and give them some kind of commitment that they they can, you know, help reduce your lead times and I guess that they're probably not going to affect.

Speaker 1:

That is, you can probably have your, your service level agreements and client relationships a lot tighter. I imagine, because you've got, you've got, you can predict things a lot easier as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, especially.

Speaker 2:

I mean we're looking at even, um, the lakes of of our spares.

Speaker 2:

So if you look at our spares offering, we sell certain things many, many times. If we can look at that and understand why we sell these things many, many times, it may be that the part of the maintenance regime, it may be that you have to change something out every two years. It may be that it's a high failure part or it may be a consumable. If you can understand what usage you have of all those different types of parts, start predicting what you think the customer demand is going to be. And if you can predict the customer demand and start tying in and clients to service agreements and you can then start getting the the price breaks for the demand forecast the spares as well, yeah how, how crucial would you say that that service level agreement is and there has been for the company, then for you, is that something that's more on the service agreement, the idea for me is um, it's about looking at your, your, your key top accounts and trying to ring fence that business to make sure you keep that business.

Speaker 2:

If you're doing well, you need, you want to keep that business, you don't want to be complacent, you want to keep that business. Now, to do that, um, clients expect a certain level of support and a certain level of service and what we do is, on the service agreements, we we look at what level is. We talk to clients, we see what their expectations are, we see what their needs are in terms of what they expect from us as a service business and from that we can tailor a service agreement that says for your business, you should expect this level of service. And what we'll do is we put a level of you know, key performance indicators to make sure we're performing in terms of technical support responses and spares responses, and we can look at things like incentives.

Speaker 2:

So say, if, if you, if your account grows and you and you, you hit a target point of revenue, we, we can give you a you know a rebate, a credit note, and we can give you some free engineering support.

Speaker 2:

So if you, if you are stuck, you can. You can call up and you can get through to the Out of Hours emergency help lane and you'll speak to somebody and it'll be free of charge because you're part of the service agreement. All we ask in return from our clients is that the level of business is just in line with the service that we're offering and that they're expecting is just in line with the service that we're offering them. That they're expecting and, to be fair, it goes down really, really well and I think it's for me, it's our commitment as much as anything else to say the reward for your account and your business with us is that we will provide you with this level of service, and the level of service and the level of service and the commitment is written down on paper and saying that to on a service agreement yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1:

I think that's amazing, and I imagine for you you're managing the team as well. It's much easier to manage them because you know that this is what needs to be agreed.

Speaker 2:

It's black and white exactly, but the expectations are set out and and the the other, the other advantages as well is um, because you're ring fencing that business, it, it. It is hard sometimes in a support business when you're providing technical support and things, it's it's often hard to see where the benefit comes from, because the support and the good service you're providing often leads to an equipment sale, but the two aren't really intrinsically linked.

Speaker 1:

Okay, two environments. Apologies for interrupting this podcast with a very quick 30-second description of my business. Theo James are an engineering and manufacturing recruitment search firm based in Durham. We specialise in contracts and permanent opportunities from blue-collar semi-skilled roles right the way up to C-suite level exec positions. If you're looking for any new, additional staff or new opportunity for yourself in the industry, please contact me or the team. There'll be a specialist in your area waiting to help. I'm incredibly proud of this business and what we've built since our inception in 2015, and I would love to extend that service out to you. So thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Speaker 2:

So if we're recording the service agreements and ring fencing the business, it makes it an easier ask for me to capacity plan for the level of service that I need to provide contractually. So it does really work in terms of my justification for how big or small the team needs to be to deliver that. On the service agreement.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, do you think that? Because I think it's. It's a great strategy and it's important strategy. Now, you know you look at manufacturing right now getting really hammered by likes of China and so-and-so, because people are just looking at costs. You know. They're just looking at whatever. You can't have that if you're doing. You know what I mean. This is different. This is relationship building, isn't it.

Speaker 2:

It's best it is. My view is it's about building on the value proposition. Yes, value, the price and the money really shouldn't come into it. It shouldn't be an argument. If you want to negotiate on price, then some of the work scope has to come out. There's a value in what we're doing, I think. I think you know clients do recognize that. Um, the, you know if they're on, if they're. You know the, the machines that we operate on the back of vessels. If they're not working, that's it. There's a huge cost to downtime, yeah, and so it in in a lot of cases. When it comes to technical support and the support you give clients in terms of the aftermarket spares and things. Sometimes price is secondary. It's about the value you give and how speed, the speed of response and getting them what they need when they need it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I think that's such an impressive strategy. So many people will be able to learn from it who probably are not doing to that level, so I think that's excellent. We're doing this backwards, by the way, but if anyone doesn't know what can you explain in layman's terms what um the rovs are and what smd build? Because I think it's it's most, it's the most amazing factory.

Speaker 2:

So it's yeah, yeah yeah, so basically um, smd, we we have um predominantly, um, we're predominantly a subsea engineering engineering company and we, if it goes underwater, we tend to tend to have some kind of hand in it, but predominantly we have um, the the kind of the business lanes we have are the ROVs and trenches. So on the ROV, say, we have remote operated vehicles which, um generally come in kind of three different sizes and they're all what we call work class. So they all do quite heavy duty work, intervention work, and always required, usually in oil and gas work, but can also equally be used in scientific work, salvage work, wind farm work. They're almost like a Swiss army knife of the subsea world. They can do a bit of everything. And then on the other side, we have trenches. So if you think about trenches, if there's a trench required, uh, on the seabed, um, we, we can provide a machine to do that.

Speaker 2:

And obviously differing seabed conditions call for different ways of burying the cable and making that trench. So we can go from you know, know, trenching ROVs with jetting on, or you can have plows or wheel cutters, and it all depends upon where the seabed is, the seabed conditions, the hardness of the seabed, whether it's rock or whether it's silt or sand, but we can trench most seabed conditions. Um, and the the idea there is is is obviously it protects the cables. So we we have two markets in the trenching world which are, um, the the power cables, so thing inter-array cables and export cables for wind farms, and we have extensively buried most of the communications fiber optics cables across the globe.

Speaker 2:

So if you think of things like Google or Meta, there's a chance there of being an smd machine, bury the cables and and I think in today's world a lot of people think that that the communications across the, the atlantic sea are by satellite, but really most of it's done by fiber optic cables under the under. And you know, blows your mind, doesn't it? If you wanted to go and find out. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles of cables all across the world carrying all that data. Amazing, yeah, yeah. And our machines have buried quite a high percentage of those cables. It's fascinating and every time you're around I'm fascinated.

Speaker 1:

Machines have buried quite a high percentage of those cables. It's fascinating and every time I'm around I've been fascinated and I'm passionate about the industry and how little awareness there still is in schools and whatnot. And these are businesses, for me, that people need to know more about, because it's unbelievable, it's cutting edge, it's exciting. It's not what people I still think people think a factory is. Do you know what I mean? It's just, it's amazing stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and as well, you know, in terms of the wind farm work that our you know trenching and ROVs, do you know we feel as though we're, you know, I certainly feel as though I'm, you know, contributing to the sustainability or and environmental issues that you know everybody seems to, you know care about these days and, and, um, you feel as though you're contributing to that as well, through through you know the work that we do and you know we've buried lots and lots of power cables for lots and lots of wind farms that you know have all provided green energy 100%, and we talk about values and purpose.

Speaker 1:

Now you know, young people want to be part of something, don't they?

Speaker 2:

They want to be part of something. Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's's. You know, this net zero green energy is part of people's values. They want to be part of something that that contributes towards that and and you know we, we very much do that, so it's. It is exciting when you, when you think about the technologies that we've got and how we play our part in that?

Speaker 1:

where do you see going? Where do you see this? You know, you look at, you know data, ai and all this sort of stuff coming in. Where do you see that benefiting or changing the industry you work in, would you say?

Speaker 2:

so I, I, I think there's a, there's um, there's a lot that can be um, learned from it, um, in terms of in our industry, we have people operating these machines on the back of decks and things like that because of the constraints of, you know, bandwidth and things like that. But now, as technology is getting better and we can have things like autonomous vehicles, we can have things like that where we have like our horizon, where the, the operator can sometimes be in an office somewhere and, and you know, because of the, the technology and everything, the latency and everything like that is now, you know, virtually, you can't, you can't even really notice it. Yeah, and that allows for efficiency in terms of you can have these skilled people, but they can be in the office, they can be in a 9-5. And also, we're in a generation where it's the gaming generation and young people now understand joysticks and how to work things on a TV monitor and it lends itself to that kind of generation Definitely.

Speaker 2:

But, yeah, I definitely see that the technology that we're looking at and the technology out there at the moment, how it's lending itself to how we can improve our systems and make them, you know one, attractive to anybody coming into the industry and two, how we can make it attractive for you know how do you make things more efficient? How can you have less people on the back of a deck of a ship? You may. If the guys can do the tricky parts and you've just got a guy on the vessel doing the day-to-day piloting, then that makes it a lot easier. You don't have to find an expert to go on the back of 20 vessels. You might need two experts that cover 20 vessels, so it makes it easier to be able to operate our systems.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it? I think the whole thing's fascinating, and you know you mentioned yourself there. Yes, there'll be certain roles and jobs which will be lost for automation, but you've mentioned a number of ones there which will be new jobs, and it's a different.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, basically it's a shift in where the jobs will be. I don't, you know, you're still going to need people on the back of decks who will do the maintenance and things like that. But it's about the tricky manoeuvres and that can be done by an expert. And also a lot of a lot of um, our clients and things they, they like to see that the thing's being done real time. Yeah, you know, there's no better proof that something's being done than seeing it on a, on a screen, real time yeah, 100, and you know we mentioned the the skills gap briefly there.

Speaker 1:

You know, if you look at the skill set you're going to need as a business, you know moving forward to make all these things happen. What are SMD doing now to sort of start that process now? Is it looking for the next generation and apprenticeships?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. It's a kind of mix of things, I think. For me, um there's. You know, smd has always been quite dynamic in terms of the, the apprenticeship to shop floor to commission it and we, we have a clear kind of progression and through through the, through the um, through the production cycle and um, and on my team where we have field service engineers, you know that that's a progression route onto, onto that um. But I think smd is really exciting, it's all. I certainly feel we're on the cutting edge of technology all the time.

Speaker 2:

It, it, it, it's, it's different. Every day is different as, as as you know, the guys even who go out and as part of the field service team, every vessel, every system, it brings its own challenges, its own problems, its own issues. But it's different and it's the variety that one day you could be on this vessel doing this work and the next you could be on it on another vessel in a completely different part of the world doing something else. And it's it, we. The big thing for me is diversity in smd. We. We cover a lot of different markets. Therefore there's a lot of different clients, there's a lot of different needs of those clients. There's a lot of challenges to meet, but but because there's a variety there that that often appeals to people, and and also because we're in a we're in quite a technological world and we have to keep up with that. Yeah, and things do change and we have to. We have to change to keep up with that because the market demands it.

Speaker 1:

And what are you finally looking forward to for the next sort of 18 months? Two years at S&E, then?

Speaker 2:

What I'm looking forward to is we've seen some you know, real good growth in the service business. We put a lot of hard work into and client relationships and understanding what the client needs and transferring that onto service agreements, trying to expand our offering, trying to make sure we're getting better and I think with the you know, with the with that growth it's like a snowball effect. You start getting more trust from other clients. We have initiatives to grow our client base where we have key accounts. We'll have accounts that we want to bring online and get more out of, and things like that. So we have clear strategies on how we're going to grow and how we're going to bring accounts online and make sure that we're delivering what we're saying we can deliver, and so that's really exciting for me because I see a buzz in the place when we're starting to be able to deliver what we're promising we're going to deliver, and that, for me, I get a good satisfaction out of, because people want to come to work to do a really good job, yeah, and if you can put the environment around them that allows them to do that, with a clear set of instructions and clear set of tools and techniques, everything else that that supports that people do thrive and I think that's what we've seen and we we've got in.

Speaker 2:

In services especially, we have a real because it's such a dynamic industry and things happen really quickly. A lot of people have that mindset of you know we need to achieve this quickly. We'll get together. You know. It is that environment that I really like, the dynamic environment, that environment that I really like, the dynamic environment. But also what I like is, or what I'd like to see over the next coming years or 18 months, is realising the potential.

Speaker 2:

We have lots of potential and we have some initiatives to really be able to recognise that potential, such as thinking about things like fixing prices of our spares, getting that commitment. But knowing where to put your effort is a real key. You don't want to fix prices of everything, you only want to fix prices of the things that you sell regularly. But I think from that, if we put these initiatives in place, I think I think we'll see that growth exponentially really happen and and that's what that's what I I'm looking forward to I think we're getting traction on things like service agreements where you know, last year I think we're saying three and we're looking at signing even more and really, you know, ring-fencing that business and growing it. We're really using, you know, methods and techniques to try and you know, look at how we can, you know, make sure we're offering what the clients and what they expect.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. Look, you've ended that podcast so well and summarize everything so well and and you know it's it's fantastic to see someone so passionate about what they do as well. You know, when you talk, when you, when you talk about change, you come alive and I can see the passion there. And after you know business, it tremendous and um look, there's so many lessons there for people and I resonate with that so much. You know we've been on our own journey last 12 to 18 months, all all around productizing our and being partners, and I've seen the benefit from it and I think you're absolutely right. You know the title of this podcast is probably your client is king, but you know everything you talk about there is just how you create something that for you and your client to be of something. So essentially, it's hard for them to walk away and they don't want to walk away and it becomes less price.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for me it's recognising the value that you bring, and that's the service level is the value you bring and it's keeping that service level really, really high.

Speaker 1:

And the service agreement is our commitment to the client and I really hope people will be sat in their cars now thinking, right, you know what we've got to go. Look at all our clients. We've got no slas. None of them are signed or you know. I mean that that's the type of stuff and this is this is the reason I do podcasts, for those little snippets of things, because you said it right in the middle of the podcast one little thing can change massive, massive things in business and stuff like this, because this could be a million pound project that you have one year and not next year. So I, yeah, perfect, and yeah, it's a lovely place. So thank you very much, mate. I really appreciate it. No worries, thank you very much. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Manufacturing Leads podcast. It absolutely means the world to me. Please let me know if you need any assistance.

Speaker 1:

As a business, we look at providing partnerships with manufacturing engineering companies to really help their recruitment and retention. On the recruitment piece, anywhere from blue-collar semi-skilled staff right the way up to c-suite level executive appointments, but also much more than that. We run events. So please let me know if you're interested any of those, if you are interested indeed, becoming a um, a podcast guest. You're very, very keen to speak to you as well, more than happy to do so, but as a business, as I say, we look at key partnerships to really help your recruitment, your attention, your marketing, your training. We really believe in the partnership piece and being extension of your business. We're very proud to work in this sector. I love manufacturing engineering and my staff are just as passionate about it as I am, so thank you once again for listening. Please get in touch to talk about anything we can do to help. Look forward to speaking to you very soon, thank you.