Martin Rigley - Lindhurst Engineering

I am the Managing Director at Lindhurst Engineering, which was established in 1985 to provide mechanical and fabrication engineering support to the UK coal mining sector. The company has evolved to provide support to a number of sectors (construction, utilities, renewable energy and OEM’s). Lindhurst Engineering designs, builds, fabricates, installs and services mechanical components and bespoke machines.

The company employs around 40 staff and has a strong national and international reputation for the range of services we provide.

I have worked with NTU as an industry mentor for a number of years and as a result have been able to access information on the ways that the University can support businesses. Lindhurst Engineering has also been able to access consultancy projects with postgraduate business students for several years, all of which have helped with our strategic direction.

In 2021, we were able to offer a year internship to a postgraduate Business student, who reviewed and restructured all of our nearly 200 company policies and procedures. Because of Covid, we physically met with our student less than six times, but with careful management and mentoring, the results of the internship far exceeded our aspirations.

Local businesses should tap into the support that NTU can offer – the University has a wealth of knowledge and experience, both from a business and technical perspective; it has a huge pool of talented and professional students looking for real world business challenges to hone their skills on. It’s difficult to see why more businesses do not take up this support. I will definitely work with NTU again in the future!