Happy Birthday To Nova Design – Nova Reaches 31 Years Old

Over 3 decades of providing sub-contract

mechanical engineering design services to UK industry

31 Years Old – Happy Birthday To Us

30 years of mechanical design | happy birthday Nova Design

1 August 2019 sees Nova Design celebrating 31 years in business, all this time providing subcontract mechanical design services to a variety of engineering industries across the West Midlands, the UK and into Europe.

Starting as a new business in August 1988, Nova was started by Dave Parry (Nova’s Managing Director) and business commenced on the second floor of Pensnett House in Kingswinford around 500 metres from our current location.

Early Mechanical Design

Early Mechanical Design | Early CAD | Computer Aided Design | Nova Design

In those early days, engineering design was still very much a manual industry and at its inception Nova consisted of 10 drawing boards, one typewriter, a card index for sales and a simple phone system along with Dave, Julia and a small team of mechanical design engineers. The total number of design engineers employed by Nova both internally and externally was around 15.

Early clients were mainly in the aerospace industry with turbine blade tooling projects comprising a large percentage of the internal project work together with projects in the construction industry based around curtain walling and cladding.

As technology moved on and IT hardware / software became more commercially available, Nova were one of the first offices to invest in this modern mechanical design tool called CAD – Computer Aided Design.

AutoCAD LT97 | Mechanical Design Software | Nova Design Early CADNova’s first CAD workstations ran on Windows 3.1.1 (the last .1 being the network edition of Windows 3.1), had <300MB hard drives and a massive 4MB of RAM ! To put things into perspective and illustrate how things have changed, a modern iPhone has a 128GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM.

Expanding the floor area of Nova and running alongside the drawing boards, Nova initially invested in 6 seats of Bentley Microstation 2D software. At this time, Nova were providing services for a company called Haden Drysys who were heavily involved in the mechanical handling and trim & final areas for Land Rover in Solihull.

The use of CAD took off quickly within the industry and AutoCAD became the industry standard for mechanical design, something Dave realised early on and Nova invested in a number of seats, allowing more work to be achieved in less time than traditional manual methods.

Over the years, Nova have invested in additional CAD systems and associated tools including Mathcad for calculations, Ansys DesignSpace for Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and a variety of CAD libraries to speed up the design process.

Nova Becomes A Family Business

In 1995, Dave’s youngest son Nick joined Nova. With a HNC in Mechanical Engineering gained from his apprenticeship at Dowty Aerospace in Wolverhampton, Nick bought many years of experience to Nova. Now Engineering Director, Nick is responsible for the smooth running of the internal design office from project quotation through to final delivery of manufacture drawings / 3D CAD models as appropriate.

September 1997 saw Dave’s eldest son, Simon join the family business. Working his way up to Business Development Director, Simon is responsible for all areas of sales and marketing together with Quality Assurance and IT.

Around 2001, the CAD market was undergoing a revolution – higher end 3D CAD software was becoming commercially available and more importantly, coming available on a Windows software operating system instead of purely a UNIX platform. Autodesk Mechanical Desktop was one of the first 3D mechanical design systems Nova invested in and the first project undertaken was the detailed design of stainless steel guarding systems for Cadbury’s in Bourneville, Birmingham.

A New Location – Expansion

May 2005 saw Nova move from Pensnett House to our current location in the Innovation Centre on Pensnett Trading Estate. This move allowed Nova to expand the number of seats in our office to the current total of 40. With our design engineers working around 50 hours a week, Nova’s internal capacity is now up to 2000 hours per week. Internally and externally, the total number of employees has now exceeded 60 design engineers / detail draughtspersons.

Mechanical Design CAD Office | CAD Design Office | Nova Design

The pace of technological change has meant a constant series of upgrades both in CAD systems, associated tools and in the services offered by Nova. We now offer 3D laser scanning services, 3D animations and visualisations, recruitment (both contract and permanent) together with other drawing office services such as paper to cad conversions and the writing and compilation of technical manuals.

Current CAD systems now include :

Autocad / Autodesk Inventor / SolidWorks / Solid Edge / Unigraphics NX / Catia / PTC Creo

Quality Assured – “RIGHT FIRST TIME”

BSI Group | ISO 9001:2015 Certificate | Nova Design Quality Assurance

To this end, Nova have successfully implemented and run a quality system for a number of years. Beginning with BS5750 through ISO9001:2000 and 9001:2008, Nova are now running a regularly audited ISO 9001:2015 system.

Nova are proud to be certified by BSI Group for the “Provision Of Engineering Design Services”.

Quality Assured Mechanical Design Services | BSI ISO 9001:2015 | Nova Design Quality Assured | ISO9001:2015

Nova’s client portfolio has grown considerably over the years and now includes both OEM and first tier suppliers to industries including Automotive, Aerospace, Process Equipment and Nuclear.

Recent projects successfully completed include :

Design and detailed design of –

  • ‘Body In White’ tooling / Robot cells for a number of new vehicles – end clients Jaguar Land Rover / Volvo Cars / Mercedes Benz
  • Design and detailed design of furniture for a leading UK based luxury yacht manufacturer
  • Ground Support Equipment for gas turbines (civil aerospace) – end client Rolls Royce plc
  • New engine pallet systems – end client Ford Australia / Ford China
  • Ground Support Equipment for gas turbines – industrial power generation – UK and North America sites.
  • Detailed design of automotive paint plant – end client Chrysler Motors, Mexico
  • Detailed design of water treatment projects – design and detail of new screening systems – end client Severn Trent and Anglian Water Boards
  • Site surveys, layouts, design and detailed design of mechanical handling equipment – trim and final area of vehicle production – various sites – end client Jaguar Land Rover
  • Detailed design of a number of new cranes – end client – Nuclear Decommissioning Authority – Sellafield Limited

An Eye To The Future

From a recruitment perspective, Nova are continually looking for additional staff to join our ranks, ranging from graduates looking for their first employment through to more experienced engineers looking for a change of career direction. Working closely with Dudley College, Aston University, Wolverhampton University and Birmingham University engineering departments Nova are committed to assisting the next generation of students into the world of engineering design and manufacturing.