Freedor fire safety product Darren designed

Darren Jones, a BSC Hons Computer Aided Product Design graduate has won two prestigious prizes for fire safety product Freedor.

The product won best mechanical product and young designer engineer of the year award at British Engineering Excellence Awards. Darren’s product Freedor also won best passive protection product at the Fire Excellence Awards 2011.

Freedor is a product which is designed to hold fire doors open and allow them to close in an event of a fire, which removes any need for installation.

Darren says how his placement managed to help shape his products success,

“It feels absolutely incredible to have the hard work of two years recognised with these awards, having taken the product from initial conception to be able to install it in the likes of the British Museum.  The idea for the product was first spoken about during my placement year with the company and I was lucky enough to develop it when Fireco offered me a job post-graduation.”

Darren goes on to credit the course he studied at Bournemouth University which provided him with an inspiring foundation for future advancement,

“The knowledge and skills I gained from Bournemouth during my four years have become invaluable during my professional career.”

Adil Saeed is working towards his PhD thanks to a co-operative link between Bournemouth University and the Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset.

A team of academics from the Sustainable Design Research Centre at Bournemouth University have presented their research on the sustainable conservation of historic vehicles at the Institute of Physics conference ‘Cultural Heritage meets Science: The Interface’.

The conference, held in Portsmouth, gave Professor Mark Hadfield and Dr Zulfiqar Khan from BU to participate as invited speakers along with postgraduate researcher Adil Saeed whose PhD is partly-funded by the Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset where he has been investigating the corrosion of historic tanks based there.

Museum Director Richard Smith also attended the conference to present an overview of issues in terms of conservation and other aspects of the project. Professor Hadfield then focused on the SDRC’s activities followed by Saeed who presented his latest findings.

Click here to review the conference programme.