FEP Director Ian Mean shares a personal reflection on Sir David McMurtry
Sir David McMurtry was without doubt a titan of Gloucestershire business with great ideas as an innovative engineer.
It was those ideas that made him a pioneering engineer with innovation at the heart of his incredible skill set. And it was those ideas that led him to be responsible for 47 patents at Rolls-Royce where he became their youngest ever Assistant Chief of Engine Design.
At Renishaw he went on to be named on over 200m patents. The sum total of all this innovation is that Renishaw, under his leadership, became Gloucestershire’s largest private company. In engineering, they were world leaders and diversified into fields such as automation, neurosurgery and additive manufacturing. When the government talks about growth, they only need to look at Renishaw’s performance—over 90% of their output is for export.
A titan in the world of advance engineering, Sir David was on the other hand a very humble man. He was very reserved and after 20 years of knowing him as an editor I was only really able to interview him a few times.
Sir David said he was not the story—the company’s employees were. What is not generally known is his immense private generosity to a number of charitable causes.
Yes, he was a wealthy man but few people knew that he would often devote time in helping to give out food to the homeless. And he was a brilliant advocate for apprentices -making the company the flagship for apprenticeships in Gloucestershire.
I believe that his policy of encouraging young people has helped to maintain Renishaw’s pole position in its own world of innovation.
Business in the South West will miss Sir David and his Renishaw people will miss him. A titan of engineering but a humble man imbued with great innovative ideas.