Jerrod Hartley, CEO of expanding aerospace specialist Airframe Designs, explains how he is guiding his business through today’s challenging times by keeping people and skills at the heart of it while addressing some of the major issues facing the sector.

I have seen many changes and twists and turns in my 30-year career in the engineering and aerospace industry, and maybe none so dramatic as the last three or four years.

With the onset of the pandemic, then the return to business and the new demands of a sector, the demands are many and complex. However, one constant remains at the heart of our vision. To be excellent in everything we do. And to be excellent we need the best people.

I began my career at British Aerospace - now BAE Systems - as an apprentice fitter before progressing into the stress office at Warton, Lancashire. After 13 years at BAE Systems, I branched out to work abroad for Boeing in the US, for Fokker in The Netherlands, and finally for Airbus in Germany.

In 2009, I returned to the UK to establish Airframe Designs and set about meeting the increasing demand for specialist stress analysis services to EASA Part21 Design Organisations across the UK and Europe.

The focus for me is on maintaining high and consistent standards across our business units to ensure we deliver engineering and manufacturing excellence and meet customer expectations.

This sits alongside an ambition to grow the company and set the benchmark for the supply of unrivalled engineering and manufacturing services to the aerospace, defence, and space industries.

I have become an accomplished structural compliance verification engineer (CVE) for a wide number of customers and I am also very proud and honoured to have been appointed a Fellow with the Royal Aeronautical Society in 2021.

However, it is the challenge of today and the future that I am now focusing on. I am excited at the prospects and opportunities for the industry, the people in it and Airframe Designs.

For example, we are taking part in a project aiming to be a world-first in aircraft part production through a 3D printing project with the National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme (NATEP).

The 18-month government-funded programme involves research and development into the use of soluble support material in combination with 3D printing ultra-polymer PAEK produced by Victrex in Lancashire.

The project is aiming to deliver innovation to aerospace part production by enabling the ability to 3D print more complex parts whilst also bringing efficiency savings to the post-processing of parts.

We are proud that we’re pushing the boundaries for the aerospace industry and it is a testament to our people that we can help lead this important development.

Behind the scenes of some groundbreaking work, we have apprentices and seasoned engineers working cheek-by-jowl, and that is a powerful blend of energy and skills. Indeed, the teams working on specialist components span an age range of five decades with skills in design, analysis, certification and additive manufacturing.

We believe in nurturing talent. Our apprentices have become part of the team and are helping to develop specialisms in producing highly complex components to some of the largest aviation, defence and space organisations worldwide.

Supporting the apprentices are three veterans of the aerospace engineering industry. Design consultant Dean Kelly, senior concept design engineer Andrew White and senior design engineer Mark Dugdale all formerly worked on prestigious projects for BAE Systems.

This is the Airframe way. We are developing our own pipeline of talent and we believe this can only help us as we address some of the big challenges facing the industry now and in the future.

www.airframedesigns.com