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Brian Burgess

Page history last edited by Ian Gillis 4 years, 9 months ago

   

 

   

Tributes

From Owen H
I had a phone call while on my way to the Orange Tree today from Pat Burgess to tell me that Brian passed away quietly yesterday afternoon.  Apparently he deteriorated rapidly over the last few days.  I never worked with Brian until visiting the S743 at Portreath, then met up again when he migrated to Product Safety.  I have many good memories and in latter years besides meeting him at the O.T. we used to meet once a month with Mike Ballard and Clyde Ali.

From Alan T
I'm very sorry to hear about Brian. When I first found MOGS I discovered a list of members' email addresses, and looked through them for a name I might recognise. His was the first one I saw and I quickly made contact with him. Some time later I was planning a visit to Chelmsford and asked would he be at the OT the next Friday. We arranged to meet in the town and he willingly accompanied me to the OT and introduced me to some of the others there. I don't get to Chelmsford much these days, but when I have done so, he was always my point of contact. He was a really nice person to have known and has left a big hole in the group. I'll miss him if, and hopefully when, I visit again. Please pass on my condolences and best wishes to his family.

From Barry P
I first met Brian at Baddow, and got to know him better at Writtle Road. He was quietly spoken, often with a touch of humour, but always had something useful and relevant to contribute to a whole range of Marconi Radar projects (and often other subjects) where he and I had some common ground.
I also used to enjoy our conversations at the Horse and Groom, Galleywood. I think the last time was just over two years ago. With sincere sympathy to his wife and family.

From Robin R
I first met Brian Burgess just over 60 years ago. He was a young apprentice and I had just re-joined Ellis-Robinson’s department at Baddow having just completed my National Service. We seemed to adapt quite well to working together and also socially.
About that time we were working on the development of Green Ginger but socially It was about the time when a number of the younger lads were buying up old motor cars and getting these old bangers back on the road and Brian and myself were still on the learning curve in this respect.
Much later on we shared an office in Baddow Room 1 in A Block together with Bob Hall and Charlie Montague. It was next door to ER’s office which could be a blessing in disguise.
One funny story I must relate concerned the fact that Brian had a large garden in Bicknacre and he asked me if I would like a part of it to cultivate as an allotment. I agreed and often called in to tend to my vegetables.
On one occasion Brian was out and after some time his wife kindly invited me in for a cup of tea. They had a young daughter at the time who insisted on sitting on my lap. That was fine until she made a sudden move and spilt a scalding hot cup of tea on my trousers. “Take them off quickly,” Pat said “and I will get a pair of Brian's for you to wear”
Now, at the time Brian’s waist line was about ten inches smaller than my waistline so just as we were struggling to fit me into these mini trousers, Brian arrived home.
It was a story that gave us a lot of pleasure in telling for years after.

 

From Brian P

I was very sorry to hear about Brian. We had known each other since we were both apprentices at Brooklands and we always got on well together even when I was his boss as quality manager.

 

From Don H

Brian was an able colleague and very amiable friend over the best part of half a century. I worked alongside him twice, separated by twenty-something years.

The first time was in the early 1970s, when Quality Systems and Quality Management became pressing topics following the introduction of the early AQAPs (Allied Quality Assurance Publications) and the matching BS5750 documents. In order to bid for much defence work Marconi Radar needed to have its quality arrangements assessed and certified; which meant that they had to be documented and implemented at a level far above the old concepts of quality by inspection. Departmental chiefs such as Ian Donaldson and Nigel Ellis-Robinson suddenly found themselves nominated as departmental Quality Authorities and decided they needed Assistant Quality Authorities (AQAs) to do the actual work of setting up, documenting and monitoring the necessary mechanisms. Brian was nominated by E-R, I by the Laird; I believe Alan Thorogood acted for Vic Martin, chief of the Drawing Office.

The first assignment was to help generate the Company's first Quality Manual, defining various principles and procedures to be applied across the board. Major contributors included John Sellers and Stan Campbell, then reporting to Fred Robertson as Company Quality Manager and Roy Simons as Quality Director. Brian and I struck up a good working relationship as we got to grips with the concepts; but no sooner was the first edition of the Manual published and we relaxed than we found we had to produce complementary Departmental Manuals and so on, so it was back to drafting again. One particular problem we encountered was the production of Terms of Reference for senior management; at the time the tendency was to make an appointment and leave folk to get on with it as they saw fit. As one very senior manager put it to me: “In this Company we rely on people who know exactly what to do without all this paper.” Hmmmm. I remember Brian and I being puzzled as how to solve the TofR problem, until Don Eastaugh's files yielded Job Descriptions, from an earlier management consultancy, for Peter Max (a departmental chief), Gerry Taylor (contracts?) and Don Eastaugh (systems engineer). Problem solved given some redrafting; indeed in 1994 I used them again as the basis of ToRs for the entire Board prior to the first ISO 9001 assessment of the then Radar Systems company.

Over several years Brian and I developed and enhanced departmental systems and procedures, working to persuade our respective bosses and colleagues that we knew what we were doing and what they ought to be doing. Fairly rapidly we found that the AQA posts offered unexpected opportunities; one satisfying example was the standard tick list Brian and I concocted to reduce the amount of repetitive paperwork associated with the K239 Special Development Enquiries. The aim always needed to be to get the balance right to allow folk to work efficiently but with certainty. We spent a great deal of time on the telephone tie lines between Baddow and Writtle Road trying to work out the best approaches, and also sharing gossip about potential reorganisations and the like; some we predicted remarkably accurately!

After several years John Sutherland, the Managing Director, found it necessary to make major organisational changes which left Ian Donaldson reporting to E-R and released both Brian and myself from AQA duties. For a while I ventured into Product Management under Ian and Roger Woodcock and I assume Brian returned to being one of E-R's musketeers alongside Robin Reynolds and company, using his considerable engineering skills. Subsequently I spent many years assisting with the Project Management of various hairy software-based projects.

Our paths crossed again in the early 90s, when I joined the Quality Department under Brian Partridge, who was doubling as Company Quality Manager and Chief Engineer, with Brian ('Bsquared') struggling to promote the concepts of Product Safety. Engineers, although always aware of the need for safety, now found themselves faced with a much more stringent approach to Product Safety and perhaps weren't always sympathetic to all Brian's concerns. My office was at the top of W Building, Brian's in a Portacabin at the foot of W. At the time Brian was a very heavy smoker and the walls and windows of his office became so coated with tar and nicotine that some colleagues were very reluctant to enter it. I was most impressed when, many years later, he stopped smoking, literally overnight.

We chatted from time to time, and eventually found ourselves sharing the open plan environment on the top floor of Eastwood House. Brian was charged with revising and updating the Product Safety Manual, but was reluctant to tackle the task given his day-to-day workload reviewing the design of products. In the end I spent most of 1996 reviewing, rewriting and adding to the Manual, but insisting that Brian approved all my drafts. One particular nightmare were the new EU Directives on Product Safety, including the requirements for CE marking.

Brian's desk was by the windows overlooking Marconi House, and we spent quite a lot of time that summer discussing technical and other problems whilst watching a structural engineer on a bosun's chair surveying the walls of Marconi House for concrete cancer; every now and then there would be another shower of concrete fragments as he tapped the walls. Barry Pettican, Engineering and Quality Director, got very concerned about the time my rework was taking, but we got there in the end.

Brian and I also shared doubts about the changes in calibre, style and knowledge of the new very senior management we were experiencing after so many years of having bosses who really understood the difficult radar defence market, and I found it a considerable relief in the autumn of 1997 to be able to take advantage of the newly introduced 'brass handshake' scheme to retire early, at almost 62. I remember Brian was doubtful about whether he could afford to follow my example but I persuaded him he should check out the figures. I came into the office one morning shortly afterwards to be greeted by a beaming Brian with “You're right, you know!”; so he too took retirement in that great wave of retirees at the start of 1998.

So we moved into twenty-odd years of leisure (?) and occasional encounters at the Orange Tree, the Horse and Groom and The Ship, or on the internet; not as often as I could have wished, but such is life.

Brian was always a good-natured, straightforward  and helpful colleague who it was a pleasure to have known and worked alongside.

 

Funeral Details

From Owen H

Brian's funeral is on Tuesday the 7th May at 12.30 at the Chelmsford crematorium, followed by an invitation to Highlands House for refreshments.  Pat also asks if we have any memories that she might like to include in the Eulogy.  If so please let her have them .

 

Postscript from Patricia Burgess

- in reply to Don H's tribute and reproduced with her permission…

I can't thank you enough for this history and remembrance of Brian's Marconi life.  Although I knew he did quite a few different jobs in his years at Marconi he was to us our family man and he didn't go into a lot of detail about his work.  I do know that he always enjoyed what he did, particularly in the early years under E-R who obviously knew how to lead and manage well.  I know that changed in the latter years.  Another person he admired was Colin Latham who, I believe, went to Leicester.

I also remember well him coming home with an A4 sheet with a verse on from you saying you had said "go home and do the sums".  I can't remember the quotation but it was stuck on the cupboard for years.  He never regretted taking your advice and neither did I so we have a lot to thank you for.

Some of the MOGS crowd joined us yesterday and I just know Brian would have been so pleased.  

Thank you so very much for remembering so much about the Marconi years and sending it to me. I shall forward your email to our girls and I know they will be really interested to have it. Also our grandson who is a lot like Brian in many ways.

Thank you again and I know I will come across that quotation one day whilst sorting files etc because Brian never threw anything away.

 

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