Training Updates – Richard McGowan, Managing Director
Following on from our last insight into the training undertaken by our Technical Director, Krzysztof Mackojc we are shifting our focus to our other co-founder and Managing Director, Richard McGowan.
An MD of a small business is required to wear many hats day-to-day, but one of Richard’s key responsibilities is to develop the strategy for growth of the business and understand where we fit in the changing landscape of our industry.
For this reason Richard was very pleased to have been selected for a place on Entrepreneurial Scotland‘s Saltire Leaders Programme for 2021.
As part of the programme Richard successfully completed a course on “Innovation and Growth Post-Crisis” delivered by Jay Rao, Professor at Babson College, MA and has further continued to share and grow his experience with the rest of the Saltire Leaders 2021 cohort.
“The content supplied by Jay and Babson College was engaging and insightful, and explained some very interesting and valuable theories proven to have shaped the success of many businesses worldwide. The follow up sessions with the Saltire Leaders cohort offered a valuable forum to reflect and discuss the content and workshop how these theories can be applied effectively across varying industries. As the programme is cross-industry it has allowed me to expand my support network in confidence and has allowed me to gain insights I would not have had access to if it had been more limited to my specific industry peers. The Saltire Leaders programme continues to deliver more great content through webinars and cohort sessions and introduces many great learning and business tools which I have been introducing and applying in Fathom.”
It was not all strategy, as engineering is at the core of our business and we recognise how important it is to keep developing our cross organisational understanding, so Richard also completed a finite element analysis course with Tony Abbey and NAFEMS. This course included:
- Background to FEA
- Defining your objectives and planning your analysis
- Making healthy models
- Real-world constraints and loading
- Engineering assessment – is your model realistic
- Integrating with CAD and geometry
- Checking the answers – guilty until proven innocent!
As always we are keen to share our experience and invite discussion, so reach out if you want to know more and we’d also love to hear about any similar courses and programmes you would recommend.
