I came to Harland and Wolff in 1958, and studied naval architecture at the College of Technology, and partly, at Queen's University, Belfast. On qualifying, I came to work full time in Harland's ship design team, and was there for a number of years before I branched out around 1968, into management. I was subsequently involved in the application of computers in production. We were one of the first companies to adopt the Norwegian Autokon system, which involved the numerical control of cutting machines. At that time we were also constructing the giant building dock, and introducing modern shipbuilding methods. The panel line was to follow, and it was a quite an exciting time of radical change in terms of equipment and methods. I then moved out of production management and into technical management, where I became manager of the production drawing offices around 1971. Then I moved into sales and marketing, and was there during the tenure of the Danish Managing Director, Ivor Hoppe [ex-Managing Director of Odense Shipyard, Denmark] for about three years, before moving in 1973 to be Managing Director of Austin and Pickersgill. I was there until I got ‘hijacked’ in 1977 on nationalisation to British Shipbuilders. I was seconded three days a week by A…P, and remained with British Shipbuilders attaining the post of Deputy Chief Executive, until in 1982, I was invited back to Belfast by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Jim Prior, to tackle the very difficult situation at Harland and Wolff, who were running out of work, and have been in Belfast ever since.

I think that the whole industry suffered from the cost plus mentality of the previous forty or fifty years. The management of the industry were not sufficiently internationally minded. They did not see, or take an interest in, what was happening globally in the 1950s and the 1960s. The threat of Japanese domination was not being taken into account in the 1960s, and that was a period that was the decisive turning point. The product and production development processes going on in the industry lacked attention. Britain led the world in hydrodynamics and in the more esoteric aspects of naval architecture, but I believe it was a preoccupation with that aspect, and not with the production or market sciences, which was a real problem.