The global pandemic has shone a light on the engineering community’s renowned abilities to work as a team and solve incredible challenges, but the work of outstanding individuals should also be celebrated. Only six months into her career at NPL, engineer Jean Morris instigated and played an important role in developing a programme to build and test prototype ventilators. A large part of the work was undertaken by early-career members of the team, including three graduates of the NPL apprentice programme, Joshua Bayfield, Joshua Schofield and Arthur Vie, who designed and integrated electrical, software and mechanical components for the final designs.
Impact
After the initial design discussion, a parallel team created a test facility to ensure that both NPL’s own ventilator designs and those of external companies met stringent safety and performance requirements.
Commodore Barry Brooks RN, Immediate Past Master of the Worshipful Company of Engineers, and part of a team of Liverymen whose own design for a Field Ventilator also required urgent testing, says: "As a direct consequence of the initiative, drive and commitment by the NPL team, the NPL Ventilator Test capability enabled quick validation of the Field Ventilator, which is now being refined into a pre-production prototype by an international engineering company for manufacture and use in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. Without the work by NPL, verifiable and repeatable testing of the Field Ventilator against the latest MHRA specification would not have been possible.