Fife apprentice helps to cut energy waste by over 50% at Edinburgh company labs

Marina Hendren, who attended Levenmouth Academy, is part of a team of apprentices working at aerospace engineering company Leonardo that has just completed their first sustainable energy efficiency project that has been so effective, it is set to be rolled out in the company’s labs at Crewe Toll in Edinburgh.

Marina is a design engineering graduate apprentice who started at Leonardo in August 2021.

Marina said: “It was a great opportunity to work with other apprentices in the company and see a different side of the business beyond my usual daily role. I had a lot of training using a problem solving model we used and it was excellent to put that into practice.”

The team analysed the impact of this energy wastage over a two-week period and discovered it was the equivalent of watching TV for over 9000 hours - enough to view every episode of the Simpsons 36 times.

The team then identified that there was a significant proportion of equipment left on while not in use. Working with lab managers and users, they designed a process where individuals were assigned responsibility for sustainable energy usage in each lab area, to ensure unused equipment was switched off.

They calculated that over the duration of the project, their process reduced wasted energy by 53%

Mark Stead, senior vice president, radar and advanced targeting said: “We will continue to encourage and support them in championing sustainability, as their fresh insights can help us experiment and explore our path to net zero.”