HI, I'M LEWIS.
Field engineer Builder Problem solver Coach Dad Professional tinkerer
I'm Lewis Cleveland, a field service engineer from the North West of England with a habit of looking at things and thinking:
There has to be a better way of doing this.
Sometimes that means standing in front of a treadmill with a multimeter trying to work out why it has decided today is the day it no longer wants to cooperate.
Sometimes it means building an entire digital system because I think the process surrounding the repair could be better.
And sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do with work.
That curiosity has taken me through engineering, technology, web development, photography, design, ice hockey, netball, networking, home labs and more unfinished side projects than I should probably admit to.
I like understanding:
How things work.Why they fail.How they could work better.
SECTION 01 / THE DAY JOB
I Fix Things.
I currently work as a Field Service Engineer for Precor, working across the North West and travelling around the UK maintaining, diagnosing and repairing commercial fitness equipment.
My working environment can change completely from one job to the next.
One minute I might be diagnosing electronics or replacing components inside a treadmill. The next I could be commissioning equipment, installing connected fitness technology or trying to solve a fault that doesn't particularly care what the service manual says.
Before Precor, I spent around a decade working as a Sky Home Service Engineer, which gave me a huge amount of experience working independently, diagnosing problems and, importantly, dealing with the people affected by them.
Because engineering isn't just about fixing machines.
SERVICE RECORD
- AUG 2025 — PRESENTField Service EngineerPrecor
Precor and Peloton commercial fitness equipment across the UK — diagnostics, preventive maintenance, connected-fitness networking and the customer standing next to the machine.
Read about the role - OCT 2024 — JUN 2025Residential & Crisis Children's Support WorkerResidential care
Supporting children and young people with everyday life, safeguarding and crisis support. Taught me more about people than any technical role.
Read about the change - JUN 2024 — SEP 2024Field EngineerCraigavon TV Service Centre
Television repair in customers' homes — diagnosis down to board and screen level, for clients including Domestic & General and John Lewis.
Read the four months - FEB 2014 — MAY 2024Home Service Field EngineerSky
Ten years and four months. Field engineering, team coaching, technical assurance and product safety, engineer wellbeing, and a secondment as a junior software developer.
Read the full decade - NOV 2012 — JAN 2014Account ManagerChef Direct UK
Didcot. Customer accounts, orders and pricing, budgets and forecasts — and an early lesson that the product is only part of the experience.
Read about the turn - MAY 2012 — OCT 2012Call Centre RepresentativeThames Water
Reading. Customer enquiries, complaints and service issues, plus the tickets and queues behind them — where communication was the job.
Read about the six months - NOV 2011 — APR 2012Ships PhotographerThe Ships Photographer
Six months at sea photographing portraits, events and weddings aboard cruise ships, and teaching passengers to understand their own cameras.
Read about the six months - NOV 2010 — NOV 2011Account ManagerWestcoast Ltd
Theale. Accounts, quotations, pricing and competitor analysis — the first role where I started questioning the process itself.
Read where it started - SEP 2008 — NOV 2010Checkout ManagerTesco
Reading. Rotas, queues, colleagues and complaints — the first place I learned what managing people actually means.
Read where leadership started
It's about solving somebody's problem.
SECTION 02 / CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
I Question Things.
I'm fascinated by continuous improvement.
When I come across a frustrating process, my brain rarely stops at:
It normally continues to:
- 01Why do we do it this way?
- 02What information are we missing?
- 03Could this be automated?
- 04Could we make this easier for the person actually doing the job?
That has led me into building concepts and working prototypes for things including:
I'm particularly interested in the point where:
ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY GOOD UX REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE
collide.
Software shouldn't make someone's job more complicated just because the database underneath it is complicated.
The best tools should quietly give people the right information at the right moment and then get out of their way.
SECTION 03 / THE WORKSHOP
I Build Things.
I'm not a traditional software developer.
I'm an engineer who discovered that modern technology, AI and low-code tools mean you don't necessarily need to wait for somebody else to build the thing in your head.
So I started building.
A lot.
Some projects become useful tools.
Some become experiments.
Some teach me something and disappear into the digital shed.
That's part of the fun.
BUILD IT. BREAK IT. UNDERSTAND IT. MAKE THE NEXT VERSION BETTER.
SECTION 04 / AWAY FROM THE TOOLBOX
Away From The Toolbox
A big part of my life revolves around sport.
I'm involved with Grappenhall & Widnes Netball Club, where I've worked on technology, websites, statistics, systems and ideas designed to make running a growing community sports club easier.
I'm also involved in ice hockey with the Riverside Raiders, including their digital and social media side.
Sport gives me another playground for solving problems.
- How can statistics be easier to collect?
- How can volunteers spend less time doing admin?
- How can a small club look and operate professionally without needing the resources of a professional organisation?
Give me a spreadsheet, an unnecessarily complicated process and a cup of tea and apparently I'll eventually try to turn it into an app.
SECTION 05 / EVERYTHING ELSE
Then there are the other rabbit holes…
I love technology and making things, which means my list of interests has become slightly ridiculous.
Basically, anything that lets me build, repair, investigate or learn something has a reasonable chance of stealing an entire weekend.
This website is where those worlds get to live together.
There might be a detailed engineering project next to a hockey graphic, a networking experiment next to a field-service idea, or something I built simply because I wondered whether I could.
That's intentional.
- BUILDINGBuilding smarter field-service tools
- TESTINGExperimenting with AI-assisted development
- BUILDINGHome networking / homelab
- LEARNINGSports statistics
- BUILDINGImproving community sports technology
- FIXINGWhatever I've dismantled this week
SECTION 06 / THE COMMON THREAD
On paper, engineering, software, netball, hockey, photography and networking might look like completely separate interests.
To me, they're really variations of the same thing.
CURIOSITY.
- I like figuring things out.
- I like making complicated things easier to understand.
- I like building useful things.
- I like helping people.
And I'm perfectly happy admitting when I don't know something, because figuring it out is usually the interesting bit.
I'm not trying to present myself here as someone who knows everything.
Quite the opposite.
I'm documenting what happens when I don't know something and decide to find out.
Welcome to my workshop.
This site is part portfolio, part notebook, part workshop and probably occasionally part evidence that I should not be left alone with a new idea after 10pm.
You'll find projects I've built, things I've repaired, experiments I've tried, ideas I'm developing and lessons I've picked up along the way.
Some will be polished.
Some will be works in progress.
Some may begin with the sentence:
I had an idea…
Those are usually the dangerous ones.
Lewis Cleveland
Engineer Builder Problem Solver Coach Dad