What is your background, and what does your current role involve? 

I have been involved in engineering now for 39 years. I left school at 16 and was fortunate enough to complete an engineering apprenticeship with a well-known local company called Ayers and Grimshaw.  They are unfortunately no longer trading but they were so well respected that the internship created a lot of opportunities for me.

I really enjoyed working for that company and I ended up staying there for 16 years.  After that first internship I worked through several roles to eventually land in leadership and management roles.  I only ended up leaving there because an incredible opportunity came my way to work abroad in Majorca.  I left and went to Majorca as a marine engineer for just over a year before returning to Barnstaple to work in the pharmaceutical industry.  I joined Accord in 1999, and I’ve been here ever since.

I’ve had a lot of different roles over the past 22 years. I started as a maintenance engineer in the packaging department with responsibility for three lines.  I’ve always been an engineer and my passion is problem solving.  Within a few years I had moved into a technical role where I was more involved in projects, new products and tooling.  Then after another few years a management role came up to manage the Packing Engineering team across three shifts, and that has been my role ever since.

My current role is Packing Engineer Manager, and I am based in Operations.  My team work to ensure that our packing machines work efficiently and effectively and we are proud to play our role in the Accord process to ensure that critical medicines are supplied to patients. I am blessed to have a fantastic team of multi skilled maintenance engineers, who really are truly committed to supporting the core business. Their dedication, their commitment, their flexible working patterns truly support Accord, and I could not do what I do without them.

2. Where have you made the most significant impact in your career so far?

I am passionate about two things – apprenticeship programmes and making a difference.

Perhaps because I got my start through an apprenticeship, I have remained very passionate about recognising and rewarding talent.  I am very involved with Accord’s apprenticeship scheme and work closely with a number of partners to deliver an exceptional programme.  What we do at Accord is very niche. For such a specialist industry, I find that many of our talented employees come through this route.  In fact, seven of the current packing team have come through our own in-house programme.

The second area which has really impacted my career is my work on the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) for Accord.  In 2015, Europe adopted FMD; legislation on how to mitigate counterfeit medicines.  What that started was a significant project at Accord to implement new processes to ensure we were compliant with new regulations by the February 2019 deadline.

We worked with a number of companies to meet the deadline, including a supplier in Italy and one in Slovenia.  In the end we ended up procuring, shipping, preparing and installing over 27 machines across 3 sites in just over 12 months to meet the deadline.

It was a challenging few months but incredibly rewarding to see the hard work deliver tangible results for Accord.

3. What inspires you to succeed?

I am a naturally positive and motivated person and that has really helped me to find inspiration rather than adversity from each challenge.

FMD had brought a number of challenges to the industry, and our business was no exception. We have had to learn about the new machines installed, and to contend with new situations that have emerged as a result of the new installations.  However, the team have taken it in their stride and ensured that any problems were dealt with promptly.  Every member of the team knows that because we are packaging, we are the end of the line so no matter what, we do our best to deliver for the customer.

4. The pharma industry has had to adapt – how do you feel Accord responded to ensure they could continue to deliver essential medicines to pharmacy wholesalers?

The biggest challenge during the pandemic has been maintaining supply of critical medicines to customers. We have managed to achieve that due to the incredible efforts of the Executive team that have worked to keep people safe both inside and outside of Accord.  There were so many ways that the team supported us and our families – antigen testing, working from home where appropriate, one-way systems, sanitisation testing, masks, free lunches, to name just a few.

The last 18 months have been hard on everyone, but the team have been very flexible, and due to our robust Covid protocols we didn’t have a large volume of people out because of COVID-19.

Things are slowly returning to some normality, but it will be a long time until everything returns to how it was.

Accord has been agile and adapted to the needs of the customers and the employees.  That really has been our biggest strength during the pandemic.

5. What do you hope to achieve in your role at Accord?

There are various workstreams in the role I have so there are a number of things I’d like to achieve.

One of our strengths as a team has always been getting the most out of the machines that package our medicines.  The manufacturers of those machines, when they come on site to support us, are always impressed with how good the maintenance is of the lines. I want to ensure this level of maintenance is kept up, but also that we continue to strategically upgrade, as needed, in coming years.

Secondly, FMD was always going to be a challenge but none of us knew what capability and resources were needed to achieve the volume we needed to deliver.  Every day we learn more and get better at what we do.  We’ve had to do this learning on the job, and I am very grateful that the team has whole heartedly embraced the process to make it better, every day. That speaks to a real passion for the job.

And that’s important to me, because for me, this is more than just a job; it’s a passion.  Without that you can’t enjoy what you do, and I still enjoy coming into work. There is real satisfaction in knowing that what I am doing is making a difference.