Can you tell me a bit about yourself and your role as an industry leader?
I started out in academia and was an economist in training but then industry and its development caught my attention. It was when I was doing my doctorate that I became particularly interested in skills and the ways we can make people and the industry more productive.
My role as CEO is to work with the LEEA team to deliver the association’s vision of a world that is safer through promoting training and best practice as well as supporting our members. We absorb knowledge from our members, disseminate and share it in as accessible way as possible to as many people we can.
The LEEA board is the representative of the membership – they give me hours and hours of support. They listen to the members and give me direction and challenge, which means that LEEA delivers for and on behalf of its members.
Can you tell us how you got into this industry and why?
I was recruited out of academia to work for the UK Government, running organisations representing the industry and looking at how the government can support the industry better – particularly around what the skills of the next generation will look like and how the government can support that. I then joined LEEA as CEO, which at the time was going through a process of change.
What makes your company stand out?
There’s quite a lot. Let’s start with the fact that LEEA is an organisation that today is over 80 years old.
Headquartered in Huntingdon in the UK, our 1,400 members are dispersed across the globe, with more outside the UK than inside. They inspect, examine, manufacture, assemble distribute, provide software solutions and training for lifting equipment. Basically, wherever gravity is involved, LEEA gets involved.
We have a simple organisational vision: we are here to make the world safer and eliminate accidents. There is risk in what we do but we can identify and manage the risk.
We operate as a not-for-profit and reinvest whatever revenues comes into us so our members are prioritised and supported. But we also go out and make the case for the importance of our industry in economies around the world, the need to follow best practice, the raising of skills and the creation of expertise through training and prioritising safety. One of the key ways we have been doing this over the past six years is through Global Lifting Awareness Day (GLAD), which encourages everybody associated with lifting to wave the flag for these issues.
To become a LEEA member you have to go through a membership audit, which we are currently evolving into a membership assessment. It is deliberately focused on technical competence, expertise and processes.
We want to identify where progress can be made, not to embarrass or punish. We see ourselves as the ‘doctors’ rather than the ‘police’. The people who perform our assessments are from the industry with an incredible collective amount of credibility and experience. Ultimately, this assessment upholds trust in the LEEA logo.
We provide technical and compliance support to our members wherever they are in the world. A lot of our members are smaller firms, which may not have a technical department, so we deliberately engage with our 1,400 members to find out what best practice looks like; it gives us a chance to lobby when it comes to legislation, standards and regulation.
Another important part of our organisation is learning and development. We are a significant training organisation, delivering courses that are recognised throughout the world. Something that sets us apart is our ability to deliver training virtually. So, from our headquarters in the UK, we can deliver our training in any time zone. In addition to that channel, people come to the training centre at our Huntingdon HQ and we send our trainers out to teach people in their own premises.
Members can train their teams their way: in-person, on-site or online. They can build a qualified workforce with LEEA diplomas and TEAM cards – proof of industry-recognised competence (including on UK construction sites).
Training makes people more employable but our industry does not just have jobs, it has careers, and when they are employed, we want people to have the training that leads to a successful career, so LEEA training is designed to support members’ professional growth. More about these learning opportunities can be found at leeaint.com.
What do you like about the industry?
The lifting industry has changed remarkably – even over the past decade, let alone across the course of LEEA’s 80-plus year history. It is now much more about engineering, physics, maths and planning than anything else. Digitalisation is providing fundamental change.
This offers a wonderful opportunity to improve our processes and our people are going to have to keep up. Our industry is characterised by extreme intelligence and real life commerciality. It is full of empowered, articulate people, who are respectful, insightful and entrepreneurial. And the industry is not just about engineering; there are numerous important functions such as marketing and sales.
Lifting faces many challenges including the on-going pursuit of safety, raising standards, promoting what we do and recruiting the next generation of people to work in the industry. But engineers fix things, and that is what our industry is great at doing.
This is particularly apparent during GLAD, which shows the clear pride we all have in our industry and how vital something as ubiquitous as lifting is to everyday lives and the key role it plays in supply chains: wherever goods, products, materials or people are moved, lifting equipment is involved.
Why should people want to join and work in this industry?
There is an amazing range of dynamic, high-skill and rewarding careers available within this essential field.
Name any industry that interests you, I guarantee that lifting has an intrinsic role to play in it: automotive, aeronautical, marine and shipping, ports, manufacturing, logistics, oil and gas, construction, defence, power, green infrastructure, the military, entertainment, medical facilities – the list goes on and on.
Without lifting, supply chains within each of these sectors would grind to a halt. Resources would not be extracted, food could not be moved, bars and cafes will be left waiting for their casks and beer barrels, power will not be supplied, car production will cease, ships will remain in ports unloaded, all of the goods we want won’t be made, warehouses will not be stocked, online shopping orders will not be fulfilled, theatre sets will not be moved, lighting rigs for live concerts will remain on the stage, communications infrastructure will not get maintained, buildings will not be constructed.
Lifting takes place at sea, in deserts, in the countryside, in cities, on mountains. Lifting takes place in every country and makes trade and travel between every country possible. If you want your supply chain to run smoothly you need to pay attention to lifting. You need excellence in service, training, maintenance, design, systems, and products.
Whether you’re a student, jobseeker, or someone looking to transfer your skills into a vital and future-ready industry, I would recommend visiting LEEA’s Lifting Futures website as your starting point.
What are your expectations for the industry going forward? Any trends or challenges that you foresee?
We ran a significant report during 2025 focussing on state of the industry, which has delivered some fascinating results. These can be accessed on LEEA’s Lifting Futures website. What leapt out is that our industry is diverse and different and there are numerous different scopes of work and pieces of equipment, not to mention operating in 80 countries, but the one thing that keeps MDs awake is: where will the next generation of the workforce come from?
Finding people with the right skills is difficult. We know we are not the most glamourous part of engineering compared with, say, F1 and aerospace, and many career seekers probably haven’t given lifting much thought. So the survey substantiated something we all suspected and throws down a gauntlet that we need to pick up – as an association and as an industry.
Another point brought out by the research is that ours is an industry based on IT, physics and science, and yet there is a perception that it’s still a Victorianera, heavy lifting greased-based industry. So we have to ensure we are becoming an industry that utilises AI and gets the full benefit from it because that is what we are. When you think about the new people coming into our sector, many will have degrees in physics or engineering or in IT. They will be bringing solutions that we have never seen previously. It feels as if the lifting industry is on the cusp of a change brought about by IT developments, by AI developments and by the fact that we are going higher, further and into areas not previously considered – whether it is seeking more sources of energy, constructing higher buildings or dealing with countries we’ve never engaged with before.
As we reach higher and further, the challenges become ever greater, involving more complexity and danger. By highlighting the importance of high standards, safe practices and technological innovation we can showcase to end users how important safe lifting is in their own sectors.
Are there any projects or initiatives that your company is working on that you’re excited about?
We now have a new membership application portal that makes it much easier for people to express their interest in joining LEEA. We are keen to help more organisations increase their quality and bringing more people into our network will help achieve our aspiration of eliminating accidents, injuries and fatalities. However, we will be careful not to lower the threshold represented by the LEEA logo. We will maintain the balance between being a dynamic association with a deliberately a high threshold for membership. Growth will come with an increase in the rejection of applications and our willingness to say no to those who do not meet our requirements.
LEEA has established its credibility and reputation as an association throughout its history. This flows through our engagement not only with our members, but also with governments, policymakers, regulators, users and partners. One key aspect to this is the credibility of our brand – and the foundation on which it has been built has been the LEEA Audit and from 2026 it will be known as the LEEA Membership Assessment. This isn’t just about a changing name, it’s a real transformation in how we help our members demonstrate excellence, how they demonstrate safety, their capability, and to protect everybody that they have involved in their lifting operations.
Our training will be about assessing whether people are competent rather than simply assessing if they have a good memory. We want to teach people and test people to see that they can do a job. We will license highly skilled, competent, and well regarded training providers so that members can get LEEA training in their own country, in their local language with local standards and stories added in. It will be LEEA core training at a relevant and local price.
We will continue to develop the ATS (Accredited Training Scheme) through which LEEA members deliver training. There is clearly an appetite for LEEA being a third party validator of training to the end user market.
Our responsibility to the wider industry leads to our involvement in projects such as school engagement, and our Lifting Futures micro-site that supports careers advisors. If you are looking to leave the military and transition into the civilian workforce, LEEA gives you free training that we believe makes you instantly employable, so that a member can take you on. In England, we’ve got an apprenticeship, which was developed by members of the LEEA board, and we are looking to develop similar pathways globally.
With LEEA’s new Searchbot effectively creates a ringfenced piece of AI that only provides LEEA approved guidance that has been signed off by LEEA members, written by members. Members only can use it to find information and guidance.
Our solutions and our services must be pertinent and relevant to members wherever they are in the world. LEEA is a partner, not a source of another tax. Watch this space more information on all of these projects and find out more about us at leeaint.com.
