Grimsby College
Women in Coolings: Include me in the International network for Women in Cooling
Hi
My name is Mark Denford, and ive been in this fantastic industry for the past 18 years, I didn’t do that well at school nor did I come into this industry straight from school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school other than work and earn money, during that time ive worked in warehouses and cold stores as a fork lift driver etc.
One day I needed to get the on site engineer for an issue, it was at this point when walking through the plant room with the compressor chugging away that got me hooked’ asking the on site engineer ” so how does this work then ? ” made me thirsty to learn more.
The next thing I know is at the young age of 28 years old im in Grimsby College signing up for night school in Refrigeration, after my first year I signed straight onto year 2 and on the hunt to work for a refrigeration company to gain much needed hands on experience, My first company I worked for was industrial / commercial refrigeration working on spiral freezers/ ice flakers / large cold/freezer rooms & trawler refrigeration systems, and I remained at this company for 3 years.
I then moved onto another company as a service engineer were I worked on just about everything, VRV/VRF / water Chillers / CRAC units/ Commercial refrigeration / Bottle coolers / commercial kitchen refrigeration equipment / blast chillers to name a few,
After 9 years travelling around the UK carrying out servicing / PPM / site surveys etc I was promoted to service manager developing the department and client base & supporting our service engineers for any technical issues, after 4 years in this post an opportunity came up for me to teach apprentices in Refrigeration, Air conditioning & Heat pumps at Grimsby college.
I never thought for one second while I was studying that I would be teaching the trade that im so passionate about, I never gave it a second thought as I wanted to be involved in training the next generation of engineers, passing on my experiences and knowledge and trying to simplify the more challenging subjects.
For me there is nothing more rewarding, when your working with a student that is struggling to understand something, and then you see their face as the penny drops :0)
This is a fantastic industry with a fantastic network of people within it, as they say everyday is a school day and the learning within this industry just continues.
