Interview with Stephen Boulter for Escape

21 September 2017

Age: 32

Job: Vehicle Integration Manager, Jaguar

From: Leamington Spa

/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; border:none;}

What made you sign up to this show?

Well, I love making stuff. I make stuff all the time, I do it for a career and I do it for fun. I thought that mixing that with adventure is fundamentally a really good recipe for a great experience. I just wanted the challenge to be quite raw and quick. I have challenges at work but it's not life or death. 

 

Do you think this will test yourself more than ever before?

Yeah, it's totally different. At work I'm surrounded by billions of pounds worth of facilities and equipment. I'm an engineer for Jaguar with years of experience of making things that we’re very good at making. This is an unknown. So it's a real test. At Jaguar I'm an integration manager so I integrate all the technology and engineering that's going in one particular car. We have 300 engineers working on one car at a time, they all have their specialisms and I bring all that together to make sure the car is right for the customer, we're the glue that binds it all together. 

 

So team work is a big part of your job and will come in handy on this show...

It's a massive part of my job, I hope it will come in handy for this. 

 

What do you know about the show?

Everyone's been so cagey! I know that we're going to be put into a challenging and hostile environment in a crash site, we've got to escape that situation with two purposes, survive and build a vehicle from the remains in which to escape. That's the extent of my knowledge, I don't know where we're going, what's going to be there or who I'm going to be with! 

 

Are you scared?

I'm not scared, I'm really excited and apprehensive. I want to get stuck in now. Some days I think it'll be a nice time and other days I'm panicking! 

 

You must be confident in your skills?

There's one thing being qualified, it's another thing being able to do it in the heat of the moment when you have to survive in a hostile environment. Being qualified isn't necessarily everything.

 

Have you built anything from scratch before?

Oh yeah, I've done that ever since I was a kid. I grew up building things, anything from go karts to steam engines. I have a very understanding wife who lets me keep my steam engine in the kitchen! It doesn't actually do anything, I just like to watch it go round! Now I build electric motorcycles from scratch.

 

What attracted you to engineering as a child?

I think it a stems from playing with toys, the satisfaction and pride I got from constructing something was there from a young age. That's never gone away, I still feel that same giddy sense of satisfaction and pure joy from doing that today. It's been the one thing I've consistently been into, I was never into sports as a kid, I was always in the garage building something or fixing something. It's always felt like the one thing I was supposed to do. Also, I had a father who always had projects on the go so there was always something to play with or him to explain to me. 

 

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Buckinghamshire and had friends who lived on farms so I was always out tinkering on things. A farm presents so many opportunities to play with stuff and the space to do it. Working on a farm was where I learnt to weld, on small farms they can't afford to get people in regularly when little bits of machinery breaks, they have to fix it and get on with the job. So you have to have the capability to do that. 

 

How does the adventure side of this show appeal to you?

It totally appeals to me. I'm not really outdoorsy, I'm not a well travelled person either. A holiday for me is going into my shed and making something. I'm a terrible person for going on holiday, I have to do something. But I guess we'll see how I cope in the elements. 

 

Do you cope with pressure?

I'd hope that I don't crack under pressure. I usually do well. I work in a pressured environment, there's always time we don't have at work and I tend to be able to think relatively clearly under pressure. Again, it's  different to think under pressure when you've got a physical element to it, and that I just don't know.

 

You're going to be with other engineers, will you compete over ideas or work as a team?

At work, if I always followed my own ideas it would be bad for business. Having confirmation bias, where everything you see seems to lead you back to your own idea and you ignore everything else, that can be bad because that's not the way to get the best idea. So I'm used to having a balanced view on what the right direction to go is. I also have to ensure that I'm listening to the experts and looking at the data. We won't have a lot of data out there but we will have thought experiments which does provide data, so ideas that are thought through. I think I'll be hopefully able to maintain that method of thinking while we're out there. We all need to succeed, this is not going to be won or lost individually, this is going to be won or lost working together and the way to get the best machine is not just fighting your own corner. The important thing is we all work towards a single vision, once that has been bought into early on then we need to just go for it.

 

Are you looking forward to working with Ant?

I'm looking forward to it as long as he doesn't make me do any press ups! If he makes me do press ups then my revenge won't be that obvious - there maybe one seat in the vehicle that's not bolted down properly! Ant and I are so different, he's a pure alpha male, I'm not really. He's a family man like me, we've got different backgrounds but being different is never a reason not to get on with someone. I think undoubtedly I'll be intimidated by him. This environment is a walk in the park for him but totally knew to me. I think there's going to be a huge amount of respect.

 

What does your wife think about you doing this?

It's mixed feelings really because we have a young boy at the moment. Billy's five and half months, he's our first. So Sarah's really pleased for me and excited, but it's also very generous of her to let me come out and look after our little boy on her own for ten days. 

 

Are your bosses at Jaguar ok with you doing this?

Yeah, anything that's going to support engineering is good. There are not enough engineers, especially in Britain. It's brilliant that there are female engineers on this show. If only it was that representative in the industry then we would be much stronger as an industry.

 

Why is the less women in engineering?

It starts at a really early age, the clothes we put our children in, the toys they play with. I think it's our reactions to what they say. It's all completely different between boys and girls. The things that got me into engineering was my toys and the encouragement that I got. I saw a programme recently that had two babies, a boy and girl, dressed as the opposite sex and left in a room with male and female toys. Adults were then asked to go in and play with the babies, most people played with what they thought was the boy with male toys and the the girl female toys. It was such a slam dunk of there's the problem. The girls were presented with dolls, prams and pretty things not cars and lego bricks. That's the problem, that's where it starts. There also aren't many role models for girls, no clubs, it's very intimidating going into a club with all boys. You're going to feel isolated. So the problem runs quite deep. There's nothing fundamentally different between boy and girl brains, it's just society that's done it. It's sad.