A Day in the Life: Stephen Fagg

05 Mar 2020

Lead Engineer at Intertek's Transportation Technology Testing Facility in Milton Keynes

Having first worked at Intertek during my 2010 university placement, I have now worked at the company full-time for nearly seven years. Following my graduate placement, I returned to university to complete the final years of my Automotive Engineering MEng degree course. I re-joined Intertek in 2013 as a full-time Testing Engineer and was subsequently promoted to a Lead Engineer.

As a Lead Engineer at Intertek's Transportation Technologies division, I am responsible for creating testing schedules, project management, and overseeing the testing cells and their upgrades. My typical day starts with the review of our night shift testing; understanding test progression, data anomalies or facilities issues that may have been encountered. Our Milton Keynes facility runs 24/7, 362 days a year, so ensuring the cells and equipment are fully functional and producing data correctly, is key to keeping client's projects on track. I then attend a variety of meetings, receiving and providing updates on projects, and sharing this information with the client and internally. As we're continuously supporting manufacturers throughout a variety of production schedules, constant communication is crucial.

During my time at Intertek, I have gained a broad range of practical experience from working on a diverse range of projects, and from our team of experienced engineers. From hybrid transmission systems to engines utilising electrification units – no two jobs are ever the same! The majority of projects I've worked on have been bespoke testing programmes designed to individual clients requirements. Whilst this brings new challenges to overcome as the tests may not have been conducted before, it allows us to be creative and innovate new methods to achieve the results our client's need. This is only possible thanks to the highly skilled and passionate engineers working at Intertek, and senior staff who mentor and coach engineers of all levels through their careers.

Over the past few years, we have seen an increased demand for hybrid and electric vehicle testing. Some of the most challenging but exciting projects I've worked on have been EV and hybrid focussed testing. Due to the infancy of the EV and hybrid testing industry and the technologies available, we have designed and built a number of new rigs and pieces of equipment to meet client requirements. Recognising my passion and expertise , I have recently been promoted into the new position of Hybrid Test Manager which will see me take responsibility for the team of engineers working on hybrid test components. I will be ensuring efficient delivery of customer projects, development of team member skills and provide technical support to projects whilst continuing to enhance Intertek's reputation for delivering high quality component testing.

It is a really exciting time to be a part of Intertek's Transportation Technologies team, particularly with the significant investment and expansion of our EV testing capabilities. 2020 will see the opening of our new European Centre of Excellence for EV propulsion systems testing, positioning Intertek at the forefront of the EV testing industry.

Please visit https://www.intertek.com/careers/uk-jobs/ for details of the roles we are recruiting for or to apply.