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Long-form accounts of work we have done. Written by the engineers who did it, with the awkward parts left in, because the awkward parts are where the useful detail lives.

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Ex-core detector well during a channel rebuild

Rewriting a neutron flux channel that had drifted for eleven years

A research reactor's ex-core instrumentation had been recalibrated so many times that nobody could say what the original response curve was. We rebuilt the measurement chain from first principles — and found the drift was never in the detector.

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Integration rig during a certification rehearsal

Eleven days in Wichita: what a DAL-A dry run really costs

We ran a full stage-of-involvement rehearsal before the real audit, with our own people playing the authority. It found nine findings we would otherwise have taken live — and one that would have cost the programme a year.

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Meridian avionics stack during integration

Four satellites, one part shortage, and a redesign in nine weeks

The radiation-hardened FPGA at the centre of the Meridian bus went end-of-life between the second and third spacecraft. Recovering the schedule was only possible because of a decision made three years earlier.

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