Sam Bourne

What’s your job title?
Technical Operations Manager

What sort of duties do you have at work?
Working with our SGS team, key partners, and suppliers to manage and coordinate the design, construction, and delivery of the FastRig prototype. A blend of home office-based and in-person contact across a number of locations

What has your career path looked like until now?
I have spent much of my career until now in various projects involved in the technical aspects of performance yachting, generally based around the major event cycles and the related project lifespans. That involved a long association with a round-the-world race with a lot of travel and periods based in various locations around the world. Latterly, with a young family, a shift to more home-based roles led to Smart Green Shipping

What’s your secret to making progress each day?
Keep the big picture in clear focus, and everything is a step towards that goal. Break large tasks down and by setting a number of targets for each day, and even if they are small steps, making sure you keep moving forward

What motivates you at work?
The opportunity to blend sailing experience and engineering know-how to deliver a solution to allow shipping to reduce its emissions and being involved in bringing this system to life. We know we are facing a serious climate crisis, and having the opportunity to hopefully make a practical and tangible difference to our planet’s future is something that I feel the responsibility for, particularly with a young family

What makes SGS different from other places you’ve worked for?
Smart Green Shipping has a wide group of partners, collaborators, and suppliers, all motivated by a desire to create a viable solution to reduce emissions from shipping. That creates a team much larger and more powerful than the SGS team itself

Who inspires you?
Leaders of high-performance technical teams such as Christian Horner in Formula 1 or Dave Brailford at British Cycling with the aggregation of marginal gains philosophy. Always pushing the margins of what is believed to be achievable.

What kind of music do you like?
My playlist features a very wide and eclectic mix! Something with a good rhythm to tap your foot to….  From some classic 90’s British rock and pop like ‘James’ and ‘Oasis’, through to Scottish groups like ‘Runrig’ or ‘Skerryvore’, with quite a lot between them

What’s the best book you’ve read recently?
A series of books by Christopher Brookmyre. Scottish crime fiction, based around an investigative journalist called Jack Parlabane. Really draws you into the plots, and once you start, you can’t put it down until you have finished it, and then get straight onto the next in the series….

What’s your favourite food?
You can’t beat real home-cooked food based on seasonally available fresh produce, and as locally sourced as possible. A Sunday roast of local lamb would be a particular household favourite. However, there is something pretty special about a real Glasgow curry!

Do you have any hidden talents or hobbies?
I can juggle….? RNLI Lifeboat Helm at my local lifeboat station in Lamlash

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
From an early age, I wanted to win the America's Cup for Britain, which developed from an early passion for sailing. (America’s Cup is the biggest trophy in sailing.) That inspired me to follow engineering and technology, which then took me through school and university

What’s your favourite thing to do on a weekend?
Spending time as a family and enjoying getting out on the water wherever possible.  Living on Arran allows a wide variety of outdoor activity on our doorstep, and we spend a lot of time 'messing around in boats’, or getting out into the hills and forests by bike

What’s your favourite season and why?
Spring.  From the tail end of winter, suddenly nature just explodes into life with unstoppable force. It also means the start of longer and warmer days, which, being from the west of Scotland, is always a highlight!