Interview with Roy Mason
Post info
11 Aug 2024
Please tell me a little bit about yourself
I'm an indentured apprentice, which means I undertook a five year engineering apprenticeship, I started my career at 16. I started in an old chemical processing plant, it was with a company that made edible fats used in chocolate. I started as an instrumentation technician apprentice for two years and following the closure of the refinery, I transferred to Middlesex and UCL hospitals to complete my training. I worked in the medical maintenance department, again as an instrument technician with a focus on sterilisation making sure that all the equipment used for operations in the theatre was correctly sterilised to regulation. At this time I was studying for my Instrumentation and Controls ONC, HNC, 16th Edition wiring and inspection regulations.
Following that role I moved onto other company as a Building Management Systems (BMS) engineer looking after their building automation security and their asset protection systems.
I was then lucky enough to work for a company which sponsored my degree (BEng Hons Industrial Automation), which I studied part time on day release. The company manufactured high voltage cables (132,000 Volts) which supplied energy to whole countries, I was the senior instrument technician fixing and maintaining all their processing and manufacturing equipment that controlled their critical processes and automation systems.
Following changes in the company and the completion of my degree, I made my first move into contracting as an instrument engineer and lead senior engineer working on upgrades to instrumentation, modifying process control and helping out with maintenance. It was at this time that I met a friend of mine who was the lead senior engineer at Grain LNG (formally Transco) and he told me about the opportunities in this industry.
It was based on this conversation and some research that I made the change into the energy industry.
I moved to become a project engineer looking after all the maintenance, critical safety, critical tasks and functional safety. This led to becoming a systems engineer manager at the terminal managing teams and control and automation systems across the entire site.
Having progressed in my career I decided that I wanted to do some travelling. I became a senior Instrument and protection systems engineer for a well-known energy company in their upstream engineering team. This allowed to me to travel to Alaska where as well as learning how to deal with instruments under extreme temperatures I leant how to protect myself from Polar bears and avoid being eaten! The glaciers, wildlife and environment were just incredible. Other places I travelled and worked included the US, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Angola and Norway with some Offshore traveling.
I then moved into an Engineering Authority contract role for the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project, where I travelled to Greece, Albania and Italy, this was happened during COVID which meant a lot of private jets due to quarantine. It was a challenge, but I really enjoyed it. The TAP project is part of the Southern Gas Corridor, transporting natural gas to Europe from the Shah Deniz II field in Azerbaijan.
I then returned to the UK as a principal functional safety engineer with a major LNG provider.
You're the lead functional safety engineer working on the UK's energy transition. Where is the UK and where do we need to be?
We are going through a transitional phase where we've come from dirty fuels predominantly fossil fuels through to cleaner options. The technology is evolving but we have a massive job to do with the infrastructure which these new options bring. This includes storage, transportation, safety regulations, legislation and cost. It’s not enough to develop the technology. As a country, countries globally, businesses and government, need to look at the whole picture and work together to get this done.
Currently the industry is fragmented.
What do you really enjoy about your profession?
I enjoy the challenge, technology and processes are always changing. The job I did when I started my career or at least the way I was trained, is now completely different. This brings new challenges (i.e., Cyber security within automation systems and Functional safety). I really enjoy the constant learning.
As a functional safety engineer, I'm all about protecting the asset and protecting people. Due to the stringent processes the likelihood of a major event is minimised but if something did happen it would be catastrophic to both people and the environment. I take pride in ensuring this doesn’t happen. My role is about hiring skilled and competent people and building a culture of safety first. Traditionally threats were physical and came from equipment failure, whilst this is still the case, the virtual world is much more prevalent with cyber security is becoming more important to our work, we now employ a team of cyber security specialists.
Why have you chosen to contract with Applica?
I just felt when I spoke to Matt and Yoohaina at the very beginning, I was treated as an individual it was about my career, I felt welcome and that my professional needs were met. I had spoken to other agencies but it just felt like a tick box exercise. Applica is genuinely a much nicer team. They do make an effort to look after contractors. There are one to ones and you feel part of the team.
Please tell me something that not many people would know about you?
Around six years ago my wife and I became Christians and we’re very involved in our church and the community. We get a lot from this and it’s great to give back. We've set up a community allotment and we're doing lots of projects in the village.
Other interests include boating, we did have a narrow boat as a project that we did up and, and loved it. I enjoy martial arts and do Wing Chun Kung Fu, my other passions include gardening and cars, we have two Mercedes, an electric one and a V-8 – my baby!