MEDICAL GAS SERVICES
Ryan Clark repairing an air filter.
aspects of medical and industrial gas pipeline system design, commissioning, maintenance, and installation. We’re thus in a great position to take the various businesses forward under strong and capable management, and to further expand our customer base and capabilities, building on what I believe is an excellent reputation for the quality and reliability of our service, and the expertise of our team.”
Formative years
So much for the present, but Rob McCrea made it clear that his childhood, education, and particularly his time in the Army, had shaped both his own personal development, and the way the various businesses had developed. Having grown up in Tottenham and the Home Counties – including Bedfordshire, and Hertfordshire, he acknowledges he had a tough childhood, but says his early experience working in his father’s factory sowed the seeds of his interest and skills in engineering. He explained: “One of the things I am keen to get across is that you can pretty well start at the bottom, as I did, and with sufficient dedication, hard work, commitment, and drive, can grow and develop personally, and make a successful business.”
Joined the army aged 16
He continued: “I initially grew up in north London, and left school – a private school, Bishop’s Stortford College, aged 15, in 1983, with 13 ‘O’ levels, including Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, Maths, and Applied Maths. On my sixteenth birthday, I joined the British Army, and specifically the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, where I served for six years, gaining a really first-class all-round training in electrical and mechanical engineering at the Army’s Arborfield training establishment in Berkshire. My original training was as an aircraft technician, but during deployment I got involved with working on some medical equipment out on site, due to my previous
62 Health Estate Journal May 2020
Stephen Hutchings servicing a medical dryer.
Adam Clark completing a dryer desiccant replacement.
experience as a youngster, working with my father, Harris, who owned the then McCrea Engineering Company, or MEC, now the Medical Equipment Company.” MEC specialised in the manufacture and assembly of medical gas terminal units. Rob McCrea said: “My father was involved in the design of the first British Standard medical gas terminal units, with Dräger Medical and BOC. He was also involved in important work on associated products such as NISTs (non-interchangeable screw-thread connectors), as well as anaesthetic gas scavenging systems.” Harris McCrea, his son explained, was a mechanical engineer and a qualified turner and miller, who founded his own company, initially known as McCrea Engineering Company, but subsequently as Medical Equipment Company. Rob McCrea added: “MEC is, in fact, still opening today, from a base in Hemel Hempstead. I learned milling and turning from the age of about nine working with my father. From about 1978 onwards, 90 per cent of the components he produced were for the medical gas sector. He had a factory in Houghton Regis near Luton, having had his first production facility in Dunstable.”
Fantastic training and experience Rob McCrea later had a spell working for his father, when he left the Army in 1990 after six years as both an aircraft technician engineer and a medical and electronics engineer. He said: “I believe the REME engineering is the best in the world. The experience was also fantastic, and gave me both discipline and the ability to self-drive, as well as to do things properly – it was very regimented – and to relate well to a range of different people.” He continued: “During my time in the armed forces, I sat my City & Guilds in Engineering, and my associated project revolved around the development of the MEC medical gas pressure and flow test guns, which are now used all over the world. During my time in the Army, I also sat my CP and AP tests for MGPS at Eastwood Park.”
On leaving the Army, Rob McCrea went to work for his father’s business, at the time about 30-strong, and one of the UK’s leading medical gas pipeline suppliers, with customers all over the world. He said: “Today, MEC is the UK’s only company recognised for the manufacture and sale of test equipment for medical gases. My father later sold the company to an anaesthetic manufacturing company, Blease Medical, which in turn sold it on to a consortium including the Rayners. Having worked at MEC for a year, I decided I wanted to leave the manufacturing side of the business, and move into on-site work and management of medical gases, which had no appeal to my father, since that would have meant him competing with the companies he was selling to. He also sold direct to hospitals.”
Fortuitous trip to Portgual During his year with MEC, Rob McCrea had a trip to Portugal to provide training on the optimal use of use of AGSS systems to engineers working for the country’s public health board. He said: “That was a very interesting experience; I gained the introduction through a
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