News

Fine Art Supported by HMD Kontro

HMD Kontro is delighted to be sponsoring Olga Caitar’s work at the Fine Art Exhibition Gertruda.  Olga works as a Production Planner at HMD Kontro and in her spare time, she loves to paint.

Olga says that her paintings create stories through colour and passion, and she uses different mediums to produce dissociated shapes and realistic images, which invite the viewer to discover, to ask, to find out and to enjoy.

If you would like to discover the stories behind Olga’s paintings expressing her different ideas according to her mood, her paintings will be on show from 22nd February at The Welcome Stranger Restaurant/Bar in Hastings.

HMD Kontro is proud to be active and involved in the local community around our headquarters in Eastbourne, East Sussex. For more information about our innovative and progressive company, please see the dedicated section of our website here or contact our HR department.

Women in Engineering at HMD Kontro

HMD Kontro is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and to this end is a keen advocate of encouraging women to take on engineering roles within the company. Recently HMD Kontro joined The Women in Engineering Society, which is a charity and a professional network of women engineers, scientists and technologists offering inspiration, support and professional development.

In this article we look at three women from very diverse backgrounds that are pursuing their careers in different engineering roles within HMD Kontro. They all believe HMD is a great company to work for, with career progression actively encouraged within a company that produces high quality products and is a globally recognised brand.

Opportunities to develop a career

Hannah is our Value Stream and Aftermarket Manager, having studied engineering at Cardiff University before joining HMD Kontro. In her present capacity she is quick to praise the team that she inherited which is well-balanced and focused on delivering the goals of increased sales and bookings for servicing and parts, improved lead times and delivering a world class service to the customer.

She finds it exciting to see new technology being created and of course there are so many opportunities for meeting new people and travel as well as developing a career. Within her department at HMD Kontro she is working on building and enhancing systems and procedures, and intent on moving away from reactive methods to a more proactive and systemised approach. Of customer service

 

Creating a balance for work and home life

Jo is a Technical Support Engineer, a position she took after having a career break to start a family, and she freely admits that she just loves her job. She doesn’t originally come from an engineering background having been in the vehicle mechanics industry, specifically in technology sales.

She was keen to obtain a stable but flexible position that paid well but would enable her to have a well-balanced work and home life. In the future, once her children have grown up, she sees herself in a position of field servicing, which will once again give her the opportunity to travel.

 

 

Vehicle mechanics to pump builder

Clare is one of the newest recruits at HMD Kontro having started around a year ago as an outside contractor, then taking up a permanent position as a Pump Builder/Fitter. Her brothers were in the vehicle mechanics industry, so Clare decided to join them where she was trained in many different areas.

Clare is currently the only female working in this department, a situation that some might find daunting, but Clare says that ‘HMD are fantastic at ensuring equal and fair opportunities are available, irrespective of gender and in the workshop, I’m just treated like all the others’.

 

 

A variety of people brings a diversity of skills, approaches and opinions

The view that engineering is a male dominated industry is slowly changing for the better with more and more women choosing it as their career path.  One gender is not better than the other in engineering roles; a wide variety of people bring a diversity of skills, approaches and opinions.

As an engineer at HMD Kontro, you are in a world-changing industry at the cutting edge of technology. It’s a great career choice as things change so fast and there is always something new to develop.  All agree that HMD Kontro is a great employer and it’s a company where you can build a fulfilling career. You are encouraged every step of the way, as well as being inspired and helped to learn new skills.

If you are interested in working for a dynamic and progressive company, please see our current vacancies or get in touch with our HR department on + 44 (0) 323 452148.

Engineering Career Advice For The ‘Your Town’ Project

The launch event of the Your Town Creative Café was held in Hastings and HMD Kontro’s Jo Whitling, Technical Support Engineer, was delighted to attend. It was a half-day career event where young people meet industry employers and professionals in an informal and yet structured café environment to find out more about the different areas of their work. The project is aimed at getting more young people to think about engineering as a career and to increase diversity.

What Is ‘Your Town’ By Culture Shift & Creative Cafés?

Your Town is ‘Transformations by Young People and Engineers’ and is an exciting project for young people delivered by Culture Shift and funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering Ingenious fund. Culture Shift puts creativity to work to facilitate positive change. It aims at generating dynamic partnerships where the creative and cultural sector work with community, business and education partners to produce bespoke, action-based solutions.

The website describes Creative Cafés as, high-energy, dynamic networking events where young people can meet and be inspired by employers and industry professionals across all sectors. Naturally engineering as a career is part of this and they are very keen for women engineers to take part.

The cafés are set up to have one professional for every 7-9 students, which makes for easy conversation with the events being structured around a menu of activities. The event that Jo attended explored ideas about engineering with Jo captivating her audience with her knowledge and skills.

The feedback that Jo received was really positive with the organiser complimenting her on the way she kept the students engaged bringing the mechanics of HMD Kontro’s pumps to life with pictures, diagrams and a small-scale demonstration kit.

 

HMD Kontro Helping the Next Generation of Engineers

 HMD Kontro is always keen to support the local community by sharing skills and experience to the next generation to enhance the professional development of the engineers of the future. Events like this enable students to test products and service ideas in a supported environment. If you are looking for a career in engineering, please contact our HR department for current vacancies and opportunities.

HMD Kontro Engineers Help to Plan GSCE Science Curriculum

Andrew Mann and Colin Poole recently attended an Engineering Science workshop, hosted by IMechE on 24th July where the purpose was to help to bring engineering to life in the secondary school curriculum. The experienced engineers from HMD Kontro working alongside the Mastery Science Team (the facilitators) aimed to create new and innovative resources for school children taking GCSE science, whereby materials would be provided that were suitable for years 7 and 8 in the main subjects of Physics, Biology and Chemistry.

Theoretical And Practical Sessions

 Theoretical science was on the morning agenda followed by more practical laboratory / classroom exercises in the afternoon. Each topic had two set scenarios with the teams assigned to explore and propose possible solutions to each, which would be voted on at the end of the session so that this could be developed further by the Mastery Science Team for inclusion into the future GCSE syllabus.

 

Playground Equipment For Exploring

The HMD Kontro engineers used playground equipment to work on a unit exploring forces, which was widely accepted as a strong contender for future development. Andrew and Colin are very much hoping that their work and ideas will progress to the next stage.

If you are interested in working for a dynamic and progressive company, please see our current vacancies or get in touch with our HR department on + 44 (0) 323 452148.

HMD Kontro Joins The Women in Engineering Society (WES) As It Celebrates 100 Years

 

HMD Kontro is proud to have recently joined the Women in Engineering Society (WES). This is a charity and a professional network of women engineers, scientists and technologists, which offers inspiration, support and professional development. Initially 15 of our female employees have been given individual WES membership for a year. 

What Is WES?

It was founded on 23rd June 1919 and was there to support women engineers who though they had been welcomed during the war years found themselves under pressure to relinquish their jobs so that the men returning from the war could fill their positions. WES was formed to not only resist this pressure but to promote engineering as a rewarding job for women.

The number of women who are professional engineers in the UK is approximately 11%, which is thought to be one of the lowest in Europe and the number in technical level roles, where actually growth rate is at its greatest is even lower than that figure.

Benefits For Our Members Include: 

  • Representation from the WES at up to two of our company women’s events
  • Access to best practice and advice support for our diversity programmes
  • Two representative places at the Women’s Engineering Society annual conference
  • Quarterly communication updates from the Society
  • Opportunities for our staff to engage with the Society on their volunteer programme of activities
  • Bi-annual best practice knowledge sharing session with other Society partners

 

Membership of this prestigious society also has many benefits for HMD Kontro including being part of the largest network of women engineers in the UK and as such we are fully committed to supporting WES in its campaign for gender diversity in engineering. Communications from WES include a quarterly journal and monthly e-newsletter.

HMD Kontro is looking forward to a long and fruitful relationship with WES and of course to recruiting more women to our company including in the roles of apprentices and engineers.

For a current list of vacancies at HMD Kontro, please click here or get in touch with our HR department on + 44 (0) 323 452148.

HMD Be – The Health & Wellness Programme for HMD Kontro Staff

 

The health and wellbeing of our staff is a vital part of our business strategy, as our future success is reliant on the efforts of our talented team. We want them to be fit to carry out their work, healthy and most importantly happy.

Recently, we set up HMDBe, which is a comprehensive programme of support that is available to all of our staff. Fundamental to the programme is Be Healthy, which encourages our staff to maintain a good standard of health and wellbeing. It includes the support of Simply Health, a corporate health plan that takes a preventative approach to helping maintain both physical and mental wellbeing. A 24-hour helpline is available from Simply Health as well as access to face-to-face counselling.

Another element is the aptly named Be Well, which actively encourages participation in wellbeing activities including giving up smoking, avoiding colds and flu through vaccinations and support of National Awareness days related to health issues such as prostate and breast cancer.

If you are looking for a career with an innovative and progressive company, and one that actively supports the health & wellbeing of its workforce, please check out our current vacancies or contact our HR department.

Recycling at HMD Kontro

 

One of our initiatives is to ‘Be Sustainable’ and as conscientious manufacturers the vast majority of our waste is recycled. The following materials and equipment that come on to the site are 100% recycled:

  • Wood
  • Paper
  • Metal
  • Solvents
  • Paint waste
  • Batteries
  • Toner cartridges
  • Light bulbs
  • Computer equipment
  • Electrical equipment
  • Waste oil

Currently, we do not produce enough waste plastic onsite to arrange recycling and there is no commercial collection facility for food stuffs and so to help the cause, we ask the team to take home any plastic bottles and cartons and food waste, to recycle them there.

We really do encourage our team at HMD to recycle at our headquarters in Eastbourne, and if they have any ideas or initiatives that would help us to be even more sustainable and to further help our recycling efforts, to contact the HR Department.