Rory Perkins

MECHANICAL ENGINEER

Skills Overview

Rory is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with a wealth of experience designing high precision parts for use in the visual systems of UK Navy submarines. Rory is comfortable developing products throughout their entire lifecycle from initial concept through end of life and prides himself in his ability to anticipate and mitigate risk to ensure that projects stay on track. He can grasp complex concepts quickly and is known for his ability to find innovative, cost effective solutions.

CAD & ENGINEERING DRAWINGS – Rory’s core area of expertise is in CAD and drawings. Nearly every project of his career has required this skill and he continues to follow the latest updates to drawing standards to ensure his drawings are entirely unambiguous and accurate. The majority of his experience is with Creo, where Rory has frequently mentored junior engineers to develop sound design principles. He is however quick to pick up any CAD software that is required of him.
DESIGN FOR EXCELLENCE (DFX) – Rory consistently follows the principles of DFX, developing solutions that consider every stage of a product’s lifecycle. A recent upgrade project of a processing unit utilised Design for Serviceability (DFS) to lower the in service replacement time of internal components from 30 minutes to 15 minutes. Design for Disassembly (DFD) was also considered to remove all unnecessary adhesives from the assembly to allow recycling of the metalwork at end of life.
PROTOTYPING – Rory understands the power of prototyping. Prototypes display progress to a customer or project manager, highlight overlooked issues, and can test whether a novel idea is feasible before committing to a production build. When Rory prototypes, he thinks outside the box. 3D printing, bending, drilling, fabricating and substituting materials to create a mockup that answers key questions. He recently saved $4000 from an externally built prototype by specifying cheaper materials, tolerances and finishes on non critical parts while still addressing the high risk areas of the build.
TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION – Rory has a particular aptitude for producing professional technical documentation. He has created documents, calculations and presentations using advanced features of Microsoft office to convey a vast range of information to both internal and external stakeholders. Some examples include operating instructions, analysis and test results, product requirements and requests for proposals, with all updates governed strictly within the bounds of a Change Management system.

Caliber has experience in the Aerospace industry

Caliber Design has experience in the Biofuel industry

Caliber has experience in the Agriculture industry

PERSONAL STATEMENT

My interest in engineering stems from taking apart toys and bike parts as a child to try and figure out how they worked. This eventually led to an engineering degree at the University of Glasgow and a job as a mechanical engineer at Thales where I designed optronics systems for the periscopes and masts of the UK Navy’s submarines. The large defence environment of Thales developed me as an engineer to follow process closely, communicate often and challenge ideas.

I love how engineering can be used to solve seemingly insurmountable problems and enjoy spending time reading about historical engineering projects (and failures). In my spare time I love to run, climb, ski and generally spend time in the outdoors.

Project Experience

Major Subsystem Update Within Submarine

Lead mechanical engineer on a project to modernise an aging subsystem within the visual system of a UK Navy submarine. Design re-engineered thermal management system to effectively accommodate the 25% higher thermal load of the upgraded system. Maintainability of the system was overhauled to allow modular swapping of all major internal components whilst on active deployment.

Heavy Product Transport Apparatus

Internal project to upgrade the moving apparatus for Thales’ heaviest products. Previous apparatus had suffered from historical instability issues and demanded a redesign to remove the risk of dropping products. Project had intense scrutiny over safety aspects due to the potential harm to operators and so required rigorous analysis of all failure modes.

R&D Project to Detect Contaminant

A persistent contaminant was causing issues within a major Thales product but its presence was incredibly difficult to detect. Ran a project to find a detection method utilising Open Innovation, a technique that gathers international proposals from research institutions to solve very specific issues. The solution that was eventually validated was ~40x cheaper and ~7x faster than the existing method.