someone with a gentleman that needs no introduction but i'll tell you is anyhow
i'm here with Paul Meenan mr e5 and Paul you've had a date with us at college state Tresham yeah
and the last little bit you did with us you gave us an overview of e5 yep are you happy
for us to cut that footage now certainly let's get to our footage this has been tailored just
to talk to you about my career path because it's been quite an eclectic one and i call it
an unexpected journey one because i'm a bit of a nerd and two i never expected to be standing
here or have the jobs i've had or currently have but it's kind of part of the message as you can
see i work on railways start your journey starts where you are now where you'll end up not one of
you will be able to predict trust me because i couldn't predict i'd be doing what i'm doing
so before we get into it obviously i'm paul meenan i've got some letters after my name
they mean something to me um my foreman taught me never get letters after your name unless they
mean something to you and they do for me because i've had to work hard for them um where am i from
well does anybody know where these two people are from leslie phillips and Adele greatest place
in the world tottenham the most diverse community in the uk i grew up there it was
a brilliant place to grow up when um so i'm going to move on to e5 origins because it i was at tfl
and we had this group of guys you probably don't even know this actually this is the real origins
of e5 now so you're the first people outside of the group that know about
this so e5 started when i started at tfl i was going for my charter ship and i was filling in
these forms and that's the form there it's a uk spec for engineering competence and when i read
it there was a section here and this is where it comes from this where the name comes from
e5 exercise responsibilities in an ethical manner how do you do that so it says give an example of
where you've applied ethical principles now i've been on jobs where people have offered me bribes
i've come do one mate seriously do one not having that do a proper job
that's what i want i don't i don't take bungs or bribes so filling this in i was sitting again hey
what a result this is the last section of the application so when people say i want to get
professionally registered i say well start at the back and work your way backwards because e4 is cpd
well that's two out of 17 straight away i do cpt all the time so it was really easy
i worked back and then i got to a which is the really technical bit of have you designed and
all that sort of stuff but it helped me and i i sat there and i thought hang on a minute
i've spent many many years and i'm being brutally honest with you now many years arguing with people
older and wiser than me who have got loads of letters after their name they should know this
why why don't they act in an ethical amount i've had consultants say some horrendous things i'll
never repeat on camera but some horrendous things and i think well if you breach that you can lose
your chartship so is this maybe an explanation of why sometimes the industries are in trouble
and it made me think so there was a number of guys around me who were really really
good guys really ethical help anybody do anything just do the hours do the work
and i just thought to myself you know what we all had a chat over lunch and i said
we should form a little gang where we can raise a profile of this and we did and it was originally
called power club because we were all power engineers and electrical engineers it was a
quirky name and then one of the guys turn around he went no no e5 is better because
then they'll ask the question what's e5 oh are you registered well you should know
and then it would then make them go away and read and understand and learn and i thought actually
that's quite a good idea that's actually where it came from that's the true story where it came from
um it started off with me and a pen that was the original logo because basically the lady marketing
for tfl said why don't you just use our logo because i was explaining to her about i'm a vision
in a circle of continuous improvement she went just to key five on that so we did so everyone
in tfo were going oh what's that what's that a blue badge oh it's gorgeous i want one i want one
and we were like well do you know what it is no we'll go away and research it come back
to us some did some didn't and we found the good ones did so e5 kind of grew internally
within tfl across dlr london underground then went off to network rail and then obviously when i left
i couldn't keep their trademark even though i don't make money out of it
so we changed it to make it a bit more informative which is what you see now
and obviously it's grown into the more professional logo and then our visions
and values which me dave ryan have sat down in a pub lots of pubs talking about what we want
to do with our skills our knowledge to help the industry improve we don't want to run the industry
we just want to help it improve because it has to in a day it affects our day jobs so yeah so
that's basically engineering council what we do is we say to people that document there's a statement
of ethical principles i'll show you that in a second and then what it says in that statement
in this statement engineering professionals means engineers technicians trades people
students apprentices and trainees everyone here uh engaged in engineering non-engineering managing
teaching engineering professionals should be made aware nobody did i'm serious ever since we've made
people aware of this even the engineering council has said it's now a most downloaded document
everybody looks at it it's just gone through the roof which is great because that's exactly
one of the things we wanted people to see and in that there's a number of criteria
and what we say is try and work towards it honesty integrity i'm probably too honest for my own good
probably never going to be rich because i am just quite brutally honest but it says engineering
professionals have a duty to uphold the highest standard of conduct open fair honest integral
acting reliable and trustworthy manner respect confidentiality declare conflict of interests
i've seen some of those behaviors not held respect for life law environment and public good
you know uh whole paramount health and safety of others for me health and safety isn't a word or a
logo and a hive eye it's just come on common sense stuff you know use a pp when you need
use your skills ensure work is lawful and justified don't rip people off uh recognize
importance of physical and cyber security probably a little bit out of what we do on a day-to-day but
accuracy and rigor you know duty to acquire and use wisely and understanding knowledge and skills
act with care perform services you're competent in i am not competent in smart installs
so i'm not going to do it i'll happily tell people what i'm competent and not competent in
if they want to mock me fine i don't care keep knowledgeable skills up to date assist development
of engineering so this is a really good ethos to work towards one of my favorites is leadership and
communication because right at the bottom it says engineering professionals have a duty to
abide by and promote high standards of leadership they should challenge statements or policies that
call them cause and professional concern that one line is what has driven uh knocks on the doors to
various industry bodies saying why are you doing that why is the national occupational standard
like this why do you do a five-week courses why is this happening because i'm following that
i'm not i'm not this is not doctoring this is an aspiration to work towards um but it's it it would
make life a lot better if we actually did work towards this uh in my opinion of course um so that
made that drove me on so to get charged uh one of my one of the guys here on the left he's the
chief engineer for london underground wonderful old boy really nice bloke he said come to lux
live and talk about lighting and this bloke said to me hello paul why the lights on the railway
stations on all the time and i just and he was so aggressive with me and i just thought right you
and i absolutely hammered him and he was like all right okay that's just killed that conversation i
was just like oops but they invited me back and literally they invited me back again
and again to talk about lighting lighting's one of my favorite subjects to talk about especially
mercy lighting because just it's just like the poor cousin of everything really um i won an award
for client of the year because i got up and told the truth that was when i was in my full-on sparky
jedi beard mode by the way my missus keeps making me cut it off um but i did an emergency lightning
rail which you'll see on youtube eventually where i tell people you guys want to go into rail
there is no knowledge out there for you to acquire so i'm going to produce content where
if you ever want to get into route i'll tell you what permits you need what tickets you need what
the acronyms are how you go get into rail and so you can understand the round environment before
you step foot on it so that's what i'm going to try and do and also the technicals of rail because
if i can give my skills in some media that's great if it helps you and your family brilliant that's
you know that's what i want to do um i've i've been a bit controversial on some of the things i
had one bloke from bsi and he uh he got a bit of a kicking from me over the rigs on a live event
i've been to northern ireland which is where my family are from i've done regulations training
over there for the irishman and that's more about special occasions farms you know all that sort of
stuff that my family cattle farmers so that's good old-fashioned stuff i've done lectures in cinemas
anyone who asked me to go and do a lecture i've done lectures for atkins major design companies
quite interesting the com the questions i get back where you think hang on these are basics
sparks know about bonding you're a designer you design multi-million pound installations
why are you asking me these questions so it it for me it's been an absolute journey of discovery
as to where things can possibly go wrong um and i'm gonna pretty much leave it there other than
saying one other thing anybody who tells you in your career that you can't do something
be nice be polite but work a way out of doing it everything i've ever been
scared of i've gone undone when i was in my 20s i was working nights in the underground
i went and worked i worked for british gas doing central umari i was a field engineer for london
i drove all around london the british guest van i was proud to wear the uniform i was knackered
and i was absolutely mustered on wiring x plan y plan s plan m plans and all the other plans that
are out there i loved it i did it for about a year and a half and it i had full confidence in central
uranus systems i did it so i was scared i went and did some railway signaling because i was scared
i wanted to learn it and and if anybody tells you you can't do stuff find a way of doing it
it's harder in modern society but hopefully you guys will find ways of achieving what you want
to do but never let anybody bully you and if you don't know go away and find out the knowledge for
yourself and ram it back in them that's my advice to you well then that's it thank you
oh yeah that's actually in shop okay paul what should we say now
well i think we should say it we hope this video has been some help