Geoffrey spent a career on hot-section engineering and the politics of a production engine. He retired from the firm and not from the problem.
He is the person you want in the room when someone says hydrogen will be 'a drop-in'. He will smile, and then he will not.
What he offers is a species of judgement that is difficult to acquire and impossible to buy quickly: an instinct, built over decades of rig failures and production reviews, for which risks are real and which are merely written down. He is careful to distinguish this from evidence, and he will tell you which of the two he is offering.
He now spends most of his time on design reviews, mentoring and the occasional intervention in a programme that has become optimistic. He does this for a modest fee and, in the case of anything involving an apprentice, sometimes for none at all.
Selected projects
Named work, with a sentence of context each.
Independent combustion programme review
Chaired a review of an alternative-fuel combustion programme, concluding that the materials work was eighteen months behind the combustion work and that the schedule concealed it.
Industrial burner conversion assessment
Assessed a proposed hydrogen conversion for a process furnace, and established that flashback margin, not efficiency, was the governing design constraint.
Production readiness mentoring
Worked with a scale-up on the transition from hand-built units to a production standard, largely by insisting that drawings, tolerances and inspection be settled before volume was discussed.
Working with Walsh
A typical engagement is two or three days: a day reading, a day in the room asking questions, and a short written note that names the risks in order. He does not produce long reports and does not believe they get read.
He is at his most valuable early, before a design has acquired a constituency. Called in late, he can usually still tell you what will go wrong, which is a less useful service.
Looking for
Teams who want industrial judgement, not a keynote.
Probably not for
Conference platforms and after-dinner speaking, which he has retired from with relief.
Credits and contributions
- Career hot-section engineering across three production engine programmes
- Chair or member of eleven independent technical review panels
- Mentor on a regional engineering apprenticeship scheme