WORK / FIELD SERVICE & ENGINEERING
The day job, and the independent projects it keeps prompting.
Most of my working life has been spent in the field: a decade as a Sky home service engineer, a spell repairing televisions in people's homes, and now looking after commercial fitness equipment for Precor across the North.
Field service is where I learned to diagnose, to work on my own, to manage a van full of stock and to deal with the person standing next to the broken thing. It is also where most of my questions about better systems come from.
The projects below are independent. They are my own explorations of problems I have run into doing the job, not products of any employer.
A stock list that kept asking better questions until it became a personal parts intelligence system — what a part is, what it fits, and whether I have one with me.
There is no shortage of information in field service. Turning it into something a human can act on before the next job is the actual work.
A proof of concept exploring what field service software could look like if it were designed around the people actually using it.
Turning an ID card into something a customer can actually verify, instead of something they are asked to trust.
Precor and Peloton commercial fitness equipment across the UK — diagnostics, preventive maintenance, connected-fitness networking and the customer standing next to the machine.
Television repair in customers' homes — diagnosis down to board and screen level, for clients including Domestic & General and John Lewis.
Ten years and four months. Field engineering, team coaching, technical assurance and product safety, engineer wellbeing, and a secondment as a junior software developer.
Field Notes documenting the ideas, decisions and lessons behind this area of work.
Chuck Keith treats networking as something you can build, break and explore rather than memorise. He is one of the reasons I started chasing the CCNA, and a large part of why this site is a workshop rather than a CV.
Why knowing who to ask can be just as important as knowing the answer.
Twelve months with Precor x Peloton Commercial, a new industry, countless miles and a reminder that engineering is ultimately about people.
Field Service Engineer at Precor, August 2025 to present. Where the mechanical, the digital and the questions about field service itself all meet.
Craigavon TV Service Centre, June to September 2024. Four months of opening the television rather than working around it.
10 years, 4 months. One career that became several.
From lubricants and thread locker to wipes, gloves and an apparently endless appetite for PH2 bits, these are the unsung heroes living in my van.