Frank Pickering Retirement
Frank Pickering, Project Engineering Manager retires following a successful, 50 year career with Exyte Hargreaves Ltd where he has lent his expertise on a vast number of major nuclear and rail projects across the UK.
Frank started his career with Hargreaves as a 16 year old apprentice draughtsman on the 30th August 1971 before becoming a project engineer in the early 80s and a project manager later on. In his time at Exyte Hargreaves he has and worked his way through every part of the business and been highly regarded as an expert in engineering on specialist projects.
Throughout his career, Frank has worked on a number of high profile nuclear and transport projects including WAGR, SAV on Sellafield Ltd, Channel Tunnel Rail Link, Crossrail C610 and St Pancras Station.
During his career, Frank completed a contract for the UKAEA’s WAGR facility which involved a full mock up installation in the factory to prove the filtration systems before fully dismantling and installation within the WAGR building at Sellafield and commissioning handover to the end users.
From Sellafield he was co-opted into the CTRL (Channel tunnel rail link) project based at Stratford with RLE engineering and Emcor Rail to assist in the design, manufacture and installation of the tunnel ventilation systems. On completion of the tunnel ventilation, he moved to St Pancras station to project manage the completion of the ductwork installation in the new station refurbishment and addition of the extended platforms (Barlow Shed).
He has also worked on contracts at the Holmesdale and Bell Common tunnels on the M25 which involved the construction of new plantrooms at the end of the tunnels with tunnel ventilation equipment on the top of the tunnel mouth to remove exhaust fumes or in the case of an emergency to remove smoke to give an escape route for trapped motorists.
As the rail sector continued to need his capabilities he joined the C610 project team for ATC. Due to the similarities with HS1 and different access problems the design had to be modified to take this into account. Also included on the project was the design, installation and removal of temporary ventilation to allow work to commence within the tunnels.
From everyone at Exyte Hargreaves, we would like to wish Frank the very best in his retirement and extend our appreciation to the 50 years he has dedicated to the business.
“It has been a pleasure working with Frank (aka the guru) for the 25 years that I have been at Hargreaves, he will be hugely missed as he is the font of all knowledge and is a great guy. We played 5 a side on a Friday after work for years and only stopped playing a few years ago but Frank still ran rings rounds the young lads which was good to see. Wish him all the best in his retirement.” Mark Davenport, Project Draughtsman
“I would like to say that it’s been a pleasure working with Frank for the last 5 years I have worked in the factory, Frank has a vast wealth of knowledge that will be sadly missed on his retirement that on so many accessions I have had to turn to Frank for help, he has always had the patience to help with anything when I cannot sort it myself or understood the manufacturing processes. I wish Frank all the best for the future and his retirement.” Malcom Goy, Package Manager
