An interview with Ryan England, Transformation Lead for Thales UK's largest services contract

Thales employs over 400 graduates and apprentices across the UK as part of its commitment to a growing, industry-leading workforce.

Ryan England, formerly a Thales graduate and now the Transformation Lead on Thales UK’s largest services programme, reflects on his experiences to date.

At just 27, Ryan took on responsibility for driving a multi-million-pound innovation and improvement portfolio across the Sensor Support Optimisation Programme (SSOP), one of Thales’ most critical contracts.

Dedicated to delivering availability and support to the Royal Navy

SSOP delivers in-service support to the Royal Navy for Thales’ Minehunting, Anti-Submarine Warfare, Submarine Sonar, Visual Systems and Electronic Warfare portfolios, combining a diverse group of mission-critical systems into a consolidated support solution for the Royal Navy.

“Imagine roadside assistance but for more than a dozen highly complex technologies operating in hugely challenging environments; and all of which are mission-critical and responsible for protecting lives,” explains Ryan.

“We can be called upon to deliver support across the entire globe and it is important that we continually innovate our support solutions so that we can provide resilience, availability and improvements to the Navy across each and every system.”

Driving innovation and service improvements

Ryan and his team use data, modelling and scenario testing to examine where improvements can be made to systems and services, to drive better performance and value for money for the Navy.

“We want to make the greatest possible impact from the measures we implement,” explains Ryan. “The Navy sits at the heart of everything we do, and this focus underpins all of our goals to improve support resilience and to keep innovating. This means it is crucial to have a strong and open relationship with our customers in DE&S so that we understand their rapidly evolving needs and can go above-and-beyond to support their challenges.”

Once areas for enhancement have been identified, the SSOP team develops comprehensive strategies and stand-up targeted projects pulling in expertise from across the Thales businesses. SSOP employs approximately 300 people in the UK as well as an extensive supply chain. This means a diverse range of stakeholder groups from multiple businesses, locations and roles are all contributing to every solution.

“To date, our approach has achieved efficiencies in the tens of millions,” says Ryan. “This is great, and there is definitely no plan to slow the momentum – each improvement unlocks more that we can do.

“For example, by implementing changes to our support and repair strategy our Engineering and Product teams have increased the system life of the Towed Array sonar by 80%, saving millions of pounds in the process. Our next step was to work with the Submarine Delivery Agency to launch a new support hub and to invest in diagnostics with DE&S. Using our Enterprise-wide approach means these combined initiatives generate substantial improvement in support.”

Using data to unlock value

Thales is also focused upon improving its digital service offering by investing in its modelling, big data analytics, software and services tool suites, which can help to significantly improve available information and decision making.

“Data unlocks everything we do” explains Ryan. “The systems themselves and the scale of the service we provide does result in an element of complexity, but we can use our data and tools to test scenarios, forecast performance and refine innovation opportunities, which helps to minimise risk too. Collaborating and sharing data with our customers helps provide focus and tailor the approach.”

Sharing knowledge and expertise

Ryan reveals that the confidence and trust that Thales places in its staff is one of the best things about working for the company.

“There has never been any hesitation in allowing me to take on responsibility for business-critical initiatives - and on some of the company’s largest programmes. The senior leadership team in each business unit I’ve been a part of has always been prepared to invest time in my development and I’ve had fantastic mentors since the start.

“Now, mentoring apprentices is one of my favorite aspects of my role and I try as much as possible to support anyone coming into the business.”
When asked what else Ryan enjoys most about his job, he concluded: “I have always had hugely varied roles and there are great opportunities for mobility and working in different sectors of the business depending on what you’re interested in. I’ve been at Thales almost six years now and I am still discovering more areas that the company is involved in that I didn’t know before.”

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