Collaboration at speed: what Thales engineers in Belfast learned from United Autosports

• Europe
• United Kingdom
• Enterprise

Complex engineering organisations are under constant pressure to improve performance, adopt new technologies and develop the skills they will need for the future.

Deep technical expertise is fundamental to meeting that challenge. But expertise can also be strengthened by looking beyond the boundaries of your own sector. That thinking brought 23 Thales engineers from Belfast together with United Autosports for a programme of workshops and knowledge sharing, followed by a day at Silverstone Race Circuit.

The technologies and operating environments may be very different. Yet the exchange provides an opportunity to examine some common characteristics of high-performance engineering: how multidisciplinary teams collaborate, how data informs decisions and how organisations create a culture of continuous improvement.

Turning information into insight

Motorsport provides a particularly visible example of engineering as a continuous learning process. Performance generates data. Engineers interpret that information, identify opportunities for improvement and feed what they learn back into the next decision. Other engineering environments operate to very different timescales and requirements.

In complex and highly assured systems, for example, learning quickly does not necessarily mean implementing change quickly. Testing, validation and assurance remain critical.

But there is a common challenge: how effectively can an engineering team turn information into understanding?

As technologies become increasingly connected and data-driven, organisations need more than the ability to collect information. They need teams capable of determining which signals matter, combining data with engineering judgement and translating insight into better outcomes.

It's important that we continue to bring together both people and technology outside our industry. Working with the team at United Autosports, we have been able to bring in some new ways of working to maximise our day-to-day planning.

Luke McDowell - Portfolio Manager and Sector Lead, Thales in the UK

Connecting specialist expertise

High-performance engineering is also increasingly multidisciplinary, bringing together partners, technologies and expertise to create capabilities that are adaptable. By balancing sovereign capability with collaboration and innovation, engineers can help deliver the agility needed to stay ahead of rapidly evolving operational challenges.

These principles of being partner focused, sovereign and sustainable, secure by design and built for integration are central to Thales' UK Technology Strategy. Complex technologies require expertise across different domains, but performance ultimately depends on how effectively those disciplines work together.

Motorsport makes that relationship particularly visible. What happens on the track is the result of a wider engineering system in which people, technology, processes and information need to operate together. The same principle applies across advanced technology industries. Specialist knowledge remains essential, but organisations also need engineers who can understand the wider system, communicate across disciplines and recognise how their decisions affect colleagues elsewhere.

Collaboration at speed © United Autosports

Creating space for different thinking

Cross-industry learning isn't about transferring a motorsport process directly into another engineering environment. Its value is in challenging established assumptions. Different sectors solve problems under different constraints. Bringing engineers together gives them an opportunity to compare those approaches and ask why something is done in a particular way - and whether seeing the problem differently could produce a better result.

That matters as the technologies Thales engineers work with continue to evolve. Across its UK activities, engineering teams are working with areas including AI, autonomy, cyber, sensing, secure communications and space technologies. Maintaining capability in those areas requires investment not only in technology, but in people and their continued development.

Curiosity and critical thinking therefore sit alongside technical expertise as important engineering capabilities - consistent with Thales's wider approach to giving people opportunities to learn, explore and take on new challenges.

Working with the team at United Autosports gave us an excellent insight into how we can learn from our shared industry experience. We discovered that both our teams deal with similarities in people development and building resilience, especially in high-performance engineering environments. The workshop was an incredibly valuable experience.

Thomas Peltey - Programme Director, Thales in the UK

For Thales, that is the wider value of the United Autosports experience. High-performing engineering organisations need deep expertise - but they also need the curiosity to keep testing how they work.

Sometimes, one of the most effective ways to do that is to learn from an industry that approaches the same fundamental engineering challenges from an entirely different direction.