An engineer has taken skills acquired on the Formula 1 racing circuit and applied them to his new role in the North Sea oil and gas industry.
David Jamieson, 27, used to design and analyse the performance of parts on Red Bull Racing’s F1 championship-winning cars.
He now works at Aberdeen design and analysis service company Apollo, using the same computational fluid mechanics expertise he developed in the ultra-competitive F1 environment.
Mr Jamieson said: “My (previous) role was as a CFD – computational fluid dynamics – engineer with the Red Bull team. CFD allows . . . flow of air across a structure to be visualised on a computer without the need for physical testing.
“Primarily, I was responsible for the creation of computational models suitable for CFD analysis and assessing the potential benefit of new parts to the aerodynamic performance of Formula 1 racing cars. In addition, I helped to optimise simulation procedures – maximising data output – and designed my own aerodynamic components.”
He was at Red Bull Racing for more than two years, when its drivers were Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, but he has no regrets about swapping the glamour of F1 for a job in Europe’s energy capital.
He said: “I am delighted to be working in the oil industry and at Apollo. The variety of work undertaken here, along with the attitude and the skill of the people, makes it a very exciting and challenging place to work. When you see your hard work put to use, in many respects it is just as thrilling as F1.”
Despite obvious differences, he said his current day-to-day working life was not so different because his new employer used CFD in many ways.
Apollo, based in Waterloo Quay, was set up in 2010 and now employs more than 40 people. In its latest financial year, to September 2012, revenue rose by 400% and is expected to double to more than £3.2million in the current trading period.
This is in line with a growth plan to employ 100 staff and generate profitable revenue of £10million by the end of 2015.
Managing director Jonathan D’Arcy said employees such as Mr Jamieson were the future for the firm, which was having to broaden its horizons to meet recruitment needs.
He added: “Because of the specialised nature of what we do we have had to recruit engineers from various industries that would not be instantly apparent or applicable if you were to think of the traditional oil and gas industry, but things are changing and skill sets are becoming increasingly transferable.”