National Engineering Day 2023
Happy National Engineering Day! Today celebrates the incredible work that engineers do, with a specific focus on innovations that make our daily lives more sustainable.
National Engineering Day is held by the Royal Academy of Engineering, and aims to make the profession more visible and highlight how engineers are shaping the world.
At Saab UK, we are proud of the work our engineers do across the business. From the making of underwater ROVs and Radars in Fareham, to software engineering at Sensor Systems in Farnborough, and Public Safety Solutions in Hull. In August, we also acquired BlueBear, a world leader in AI-enabled autonomous swarm systems for complex defence and security applications.
Our new radar production facility was recently opened in Fareham. The skilled staff there primarily produce and integrate the new Deployment Set, which is a configuration of the Giraffe 1X highly mobile, compact 3D AESA radar. The first units of the Giraffe 1X Deployment Set are already in production at the Fareham site.
As this year's focus is sustainability, we spoke to Mat Maher, eWROV Chief Engineer, about the fully electric underwater vehicle that was designed with eco-responsibility in mind.
Mat said: “It's one of the world's first fully electric ROVs of this class. The electricity makes it more efficient, and makes it cleaner to operate, and more reliable. The move to electric really provides the control that's needed for remote operations and computer-based control.
“The engineering behind something like the eWROV is not too different to making a Formula 1 car. For everything I work on, I get a sense of achievement when I go home at night that I'm actually making a difference and I'm doing something physical and tangible that you can see in operation.
Mat's advice for aspiring engineers would be: “Don't grow up. The nature of everything we do is to play, to learn, and ask the question 'why?'. Be curious, never stop learning. You're constantly pushing the boundaries, and pushing the edges. A lot of products I have worked on over the years, nobody has ever done before. These are world-first products."
To celebrate National Engineering Day, Dr Yoge Patel, BlueBear A Saab Company's CEO, has been recognised by both the Royal Academy of Engineering and TfL as they have included her on their 'Engineering Icons Tube Map'. Yoge's station can be found on the 'Computing, Technology and AI' line in Borough Market's usual place.