Award winners in focus: Engineer of the Year
This week we get to know more about George Smith, winner of the BCIA’s Engineer of the Year award, 2023.
Boasting a strong background in mechanical and electrical engineering, George Smith excels in the delivery of service, maintenance, callouts, small works and remedials, much to the delight of his clients!
Describing his surprise at having won, George said: “It was an absolute honour to have been shortlisted for this prestigious award, when I was announced as the winner, it was a wonderful surprise! The competition was tough, everyone that had been shortlist deserved the award and should be proud.”
Nominated for the award by Matt Smith, Sales Director at 3mse Ltd, George demonstrated his breadth of skills after being selected to be the lead engineer on two high profile service contract sites within the company’s portfolio. Both sites had been through two or three different BMS companies over previous years, had many legacy technical issues that needed addressing and two very challenging clients that were at their wits’ end with BMS system integrators in general. To add further to this there was a real mish mash of various systems on both sites and a lot of investigation work to do early on to try and establish a plan and a route out of the mess they found themselves in.
George took full ownership of both sites, built great relationships with both the facilities managers and their clients and put together a robust plan to tackle all of the issues with a solid plan for how the buildings could be enhanced moving forward with a real focus on energy reduction and enhanced operational control.
On the success of the projects, Matt Smith commented: “Two years on and we have got glowing testimonials from both sites/clients, a significant upgrade spend and a clear path forward where everybody is happy and the systems are now fit for purpose.”
Regarding George’s work ethic Matt added: “We have got more client thank you emails for George than we know what to do with, it has got to the stage where every site that George steps foot in ends up sending some kind of testimonial or thank you email to commend not only the quality of his work, but his general attitude and helpful nature.
“George will take the time to sit with the various clients to understand what they want to achieve on a service visit or small works job, and will find a way to effectively communicate how he is going to do this, and then overdeliver on the client expectations.”
George was keen to extend his thanks to those who helped him along in his career and achieve this prestigious accolade. He concluded: “I cannot express my gratitude enough to 3MSE for nominating me. I also want to thank all the incredible individuals who supported my nomination and stood by me throughout this journey. All the amazing colleagues I’ve had the privilege of working alongside in this industry have played an invaluable role in shaping me into the engineer I am today.”