Dr
John Welford MEng PhD CEng MIET MINCOSE
Goal
Optimising the human experience through the engineering of technologies and systems.
Expertise
Systems
Requirements. Verification/Validation. Architectures. Configuration Management. Interfaces. Test.
Communication
Documentation. Data publication. Interactive visualisation.
Modelling
System, mechanical, electrical, thermal and control domains.
Mechatronics
Actuator design, development and test. Control system design.
Leadership
Management. Innovation. Training. Development.
Career
WSP (UK and NZ) (2014 – present)
Systems Engineering Team Lead for heavy, light and high-speed rail programmes.
Rail Systems Engineering Team Lead including recruitment, development, training, and promotion.
Systems Engineering Manager for the KiwiRail Interislander Ferry Terminals upgrade.
Systems Engineering Manager in the C7 Alliance and Requirements Manager in the Link Alliance for the Auckland City Rail Link (NZ’s largest ever infrastructure project).
Systems Engineering lead for the Gawler Rail Electrification project (Australia).
Work with Public Transport Victoria to develop their systems engineering capabilities, in particular using model-based systems engineering methods (Australia).
Configuration Management Team Lead providing consultancy to the RTA in Dubai.
System architecture diagrams for Network Rail North of England, High Speed 2, and Transport for Greater Manchester Metrolink trams.
Systems Engineering framework development – reusable tools, processes and capabilities.
Cummins Turbo Technologies (2010 – 2014)
Sponsored PhD student working closely with the Mechatronics team.
Research on electric actuator design methodologies for variable geometry turbochargers. Focused on the actuator design process, particularly the modelling and selection of power electronics, brushless motors and gear train combinations.
Including: tools for assessing motor and gear capabilities; tests to parameterise candidate motors; multi-domain modelling; model validation; positioning control schemes; prototype construction and test; microcontroller coding.
QinetiQ (2004 – 2010)
Defence engineering research, within the Sensors and Algorithms capability in the Guided Weapons domain.
Technical Lead and Systems Engineer for major programmes of work. Led teams developing algorithms and integrating a live flight demonstrator.
Lead technical researcheron 3D tracking for two world first high speed impact trials.
Technical work including: target tracking; data fusion; lethality optimisation; guidance; system modelling and simulation; autonomy; performance assessment; work on high altitude UAV systems.
Education
Professional Skills
Technical leadership
Leadership of large programmes of work, building a team, assigning work, directing development, providing training and liaising with other teams.
Management
Teambuilding, bidding, tasking, resourcing and meeting milestones.
Documentation
Many in-depth technical/customer/pubic-oriented reports and documents produced; using a variety of packages (Microsoft/Libre Office, LaTeX, HTML).
Presentation
Presented on a variety of subjects to audiences ranging from school children through to international conferences of world experts.
Technical Competencies
MBSE
Model-Based Systems Engineering including SysML and UML languages using a variety of tools (IBM DOORS, Visio, Enterprise Architect, PlantUML).
Simulation
Experienced creating large dynamic physical simulations using Matlab, Simulink and third party libraries and toolboxes.
Coding
Algorithm design and coding for experimentation, modelling, data analysis and data presentation using Matlab, VBA and Javascript.
Hardware
Design and construction of test and demonstration equipment. Development of real-time C code for Arduino and Microchip devices.
Communication
Languages
Basic French and German (supported by numerous holidays).
STEM
Voluntary work with local schools on a wide variety of projects as a STEM Ambassador (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). Activities developed adopted for use at a regional level.
An article on my experience as a STEM ambassador
Published in the INCOSE UK newsletter.
I took part in "I'm a Scientist – Get me out of here"
Check out my questions and answers.
Mentoring
Mentor to junior engineers progressing on the route to chartership, and students studying engineering.
A tutorial on Information Publication Skills for Systems Engineers
Formatted for reading, the original slides are also available.
Publications
Articles
Several papers authored on the the subjects of mechatronics and systems engineering.
The Infrastructure Project of the Future
Making some predictions about the future of infrastruture projects.
Visualizing the End Goal in Rail Megaprojects.
Contributed to a article on through WSP.
PhD Thesis on Automotive Electric Actuator Modelling and Design Methodologies.
Completed at the University of Manchester.
Provoking Stakeholder Engagement through Diagrammatic Iteration
A paper presented at the 2018 Systems Engineering Test and Evaluation conference.
Clinical assessment of shoulder joint-position sense and interactive data analysis – a pilot study
A preprint paper submitted for review.
Data Visualisation for Systems Engineers
A paper presented at an INCOSE UK Annual Systems Engineering Conference.
Systems integration in the rail industry
An article published in the Network technical journal.
Computationally efficient brushless permanent magnet motor modelling
A paper presented at an IET conference.
Fidelity requirements in brushless permanent magnet motor modelling
A paper presented at an IET conference.
Multi-sensor Debris Tracking
A paper presented at an IET conference. My presentation is also online.
Blog posts
Regular internal technical posts sharing knowledge and experience.
An infographic rant about poor data presentation
Take a look and feel free to share if you agree.
A blog about tools and techniques I used during my PhD
A list of analogies between physical domains
A mostly complete pdf, but still a work in progress.
DataVis
Static and interactive presentation of data for both analysis and effective information publication.
A tool for investigating mountain bike rear suspension designs
Based on identification of pivot points in an image. There is also a tool for comparing different bikes.
A set of notes on Sex, Gender and Sexuality
Including highlighted diagrams.
An interactive analysis of whether The Rock can jump from a crane to a skyscraper
An experiment in using the Observable format.
An experiment in presenting technical work to a wider audience
Presenting the joint-position-sensing work also written up more formally and testing out a variety of ideas extending the results plotted below.
An interactive presentation of shoulder propriception clinical research
Displayed interactively here.
An analysis of the results of survey on climbers anatomy
Displayed interactively here.
A flowchart of what image file formats should be used
A set of actuator design tools
As part of my PhD, to play with the effects of parameter changes.
Interests
Effective Altruism
Local group leadership, participation within a national movement.
A LinkedIn post about my charity donations.
A set of notes on what, how and why I donate to charity
Published to promote charity donation and invite feedback on my choices.
The Outdoors
Mountain biking, Snowboarding, Tramping, Mountaineering, Adventures.
A set of spherical photos taken on holiday in New Zealand
Indexed and displayed using a javascript viewer.
I drove a 1986 Fiat Panda from the UK to Africa
Take a look at our never-quite-finished website documenting the journey.
Hacking
Software and hardware modification, development and improvement.
A random Amazon item purchasing dead man's switch
Check out the code for it on GitHub.
A modified set of bathroom scales to log weights over wifi
A writeup of the process is given here.
A model of a medical Linear Accelerator in Lego
Also with an MRI machine as a second model from the same parts.
A clock that shows the time according to how late the trains are running
Take a look at the code for it on GitHub.
A random number text messaging app
Check out the brief code for it on GitHub.