Nick is a socio-technical systems researcher, located at the School of Management (SOM). He studies the integration of people and technology with a particular interest in High Performing Organisations (HPO) in a variety of sectors and Highly Reliable Organisations (HRO) in safety-critical settings. He is an applied researcher and believes wholeheartedly that the most interesting research opportunities exist by working across university specialisms and through collaborations with industry, service providers and regulators/professional bodies to innovate and contribute to the quality of life for patients, their families, peer networks and their carers.
He started his career researching lean operations with Toyota Motor Corporation (Japan) whilst at Cardiff Business School before returning to the UK to work with major international manufacturing and service businesses to use lean methods for production and resilience engineering. In 2000 he broadened his research with healthcare providers and was later funded to study safer clinical systems by the Health Foundation whilst at Warwick Medical School. He has studied and improved a wide variety of patient pathways and he has a particular interest in conditions affecting older persons including the modification of the environment to support safer care.
He was invited to be the Chief Industrial Engineer for the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games medals and joined Swansea University in 2013. He has a pan-university remit which includes collaborations with the Engineering, Health and Human Science and Medical Schools. He works closely with the Bevan Academy and its ‘flagship’ Bevan Exemplar programme (Process and Technology pioneers).
Nick is a Commercial Theme Lead at The Awen Institute, driving the strategic direction of commercialisation; signposting, supporting and facilitating activities that build routes to market and to develop relationships across all research clusters and cross-cutting themes to embed and support commercial engagement. Nick is also responsible for support/co-production with older people (and other stakeholders) to test products, services, experiences and research methods and to feed expertise and knowledge into the development of The Awen Institute’s ‘Living Lab’ i.e. daily living facility, location based virtual reality living facility and community based living labs.
