The team comprises seasoned individuals from the fields of energy, renewables, business, engineering academia and product innovation
Chairman
With decades experience working in one of the top 5 UK power companies, Alan is the lead energy expert on the team.
Alan worked at SSE for 20 years. Operating at at a very senior level, from Head of Energy Supply – responsible for sales, supply and billing of energy to both domestic and business customers across the UK competitive market – to Commercial Director for Wales and a budget of circa £3bn.
He now uses his broad experiences with others. Since 2017 Alan has worked as an independent consultancy helping to connect and improve businesses to develop, implement and deliver their strategies. Supporting senior decision makers Alan has helped them realise their sales/ marketing potential in the business/ consumer markets.
Recent projects have included; strategic reviews to create a more sales focussed organisation, assisting a new entrant energy company to become set up and established, B2B energy procurement , EV infrastructure, Biomass with Energy storage projects.
CEO
Frank has a history of bridging private and public sectors through an understanding of mutual agendas. He has been involved in various business interests This led to him being appointed to the board of the Chamber of Commerce, which he chaired for 3 years during which time the city
saw some of its greatest growth in nearly 80 years. The organization at that time saw:
This was followed by a spell as chair of Cardiff Initiative during which time it achieved some of the most intense coverage achieved up to that point for Cardiff in the London and international media.
Through all this Frank’s main focus has been developing and running a successful optometry and audiology business under the Specsavers banner, taking it from a single location with a handful of employees to a multi site operation, employing over 120 people and turning over in excess of £7million per annum. This organisation has recently been complimented by the re-accreditation of Investors in People Gold award.
He was on the advisory board of XFM which achieved the last commercial radio licence issued in South Wales. He currently supports the Waterloo Foundation and Adoption UK as chosen charities
Structure & Stress
Alan is a Professor in Structural Mechanics and member of the BRE Institute of Sustainable Engineering in the School of Engineering. He has over a hundred publications in engineering,
including a chapter in the SCI Steel Designers’ Manual, with more than 500 citations altogether.
Since 2010, Alan has also been active in the field of “sustainability informatics”, with research grants and publications in this area, although he continues to work in the field of structures with mechanisms (e.g. recent work on structural morphing for aerospace applications), which also led into work on under-water structures and hydro-turbines. Alan has supervised 19 doctoral and 2 MPhil students to completion and has been external examiner/assessor of higher degrees, undergraduate and MSc programmes, both in the UK and overseas.
One of Alan’s KTP projects has led to the development and subsequent commercialisation of a deployable lifting product for Reid Lifting Ltd. This product has led to the double award of the ‘Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation 2013’, and the ‘Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade 2013’.
Alan obtained his BEng(Hons) from Sheffield and PhD from Cambridge.
NED Technical: CEO LEAX
Tony is President and Chief Executive Officer at LEAXLEAX Group, a contract manufacturer, is a fast growing, privately owned, business group with its origin in Sweden. Since the beginning of the 1990´s, it’s grown through acquisition and organic growth, and has seen growth of more than 35% per year. It has a turnover of more than SEK 1,5 billion on a yearly basis with 1.200 employees.
The company’s main competence is within rotation symmetrical work pieces preferably with complicated gear geometry at the end of the part.
LEAX customers are mainly within Commercial Vehicles, Mining and Construction, Agriculture, General Industry and Telecom. Today it has manufacturing in Sweden, Latvia, Germany, Hungary, Brazil, China and India.
Tony has sat on the board in a directorial or advisory capacity across a number of organisations and industries.
Head of IP (EPA, BSc)
Ross is a qualified UK and European Patent Attorney and former Senior Patent Examiner at the UK Patent Office. He trained as a Mechanical Engineer. That background provides RE with solid analytical and technical support. Ross was employed for 9 years by General Electric Life
Sciences Division (now Cytiva) which supplies laboratory equipment and consumables, and so his experience in that field will guide the setting up the innovative ongoing design process. As part of a legal team at GE, Ross supported many new product introductions, and business acquisitions and divestitures, including most recently, the $21 Billion sale of GE’s Life Sciences Division. That experience is invaluable for steering this project.