60 second interview: Bob Arnott

How did you get into engineering? Well it was sort of a natural interest, really. My father was very much into motor mechanics and that sort of thing and my interest developed from there. I went initially to BP tankers as a marine engineer apprentice. Then I went on to University and from there on to various things, so it was just a general progression from an interest into a career. How did you come to your present role? Well I've known the owner of Centa for 20 years or more. We used to meet at various exhibitions around the world. Then, when the original managing director of Centa retired and he wanted somebody to come on board and fill the gap. I must admit I'd been travelling the world a lot with the previous company and I was attracted by the prospect of being based in the UK rather than travelling around the world. So I came here, which meant I could very much be independent, which is what I've done. What still attracts you about your current role? It's a great range of products and also I am virtually a free agent, so we can be very innovative in our designs. We can apply Centa products here rather than having to ask Centa Germany to do it. We can react much more quickly and do derivative designs that suit the UK market place. So we do a lot of test bench work with slip joints and things like that. There are all sorts of applications where a normal, conventional solution simply wouldn't fit. We provide an unconventional solution. Some of the test bench work where we've been dealing with new engines that haven't even hit the market yet is probably the most interesting work I've been involved in at Centa. What are the biggest issues facing the industry as a whole? There are fewer and fewer people coming into the industry and there seems to be less and less expertise. We get more and more work simply because other people simply don't have the expertise to do it. We've become virtually the first point of call because we can generally do it. It is very rare that we have to say 'no, we can't do it'. Obviously, from our point of view, that's a good thing, but the industry as a whole is contracting and I don't see any prospect for that being arrested or reversed. In terms of general engineering I think there is simply less interest. People aren't really doing that sort of thing anymore. They want to buy it or sell it rather than doing the basic manufacturing themselves. The difficulty is getting people into the industry. Most people going to university seem to want to do a management job rather than a doing job. I don't know what universities are teaching people, but it's not much use to us. We have difficulty recruiting people to do what might be called basic calculation work, so it's getting very difficult. You've got to have a genuine interest in and flair for the subject and I despair of those who don't. I think engineers are born rather than made. You can teach people mechanics, but you can't teach the imagination to apply them properly. What still excites you about engineering? Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that there's always something new. There's always a new challenge somewhere down the line. We've got special designs that we make that fill a very specific need and it's genuinely very satisfying to see them working as they should for the customer. There's no doubt that the satisfaction is basically the best thing about the job.