Chris joined Fluent Europe Ltd in 1996 as European Consultancy Manager. Fluent was the market leader in Computational Fluid Dynamics (a Computer Aided Engineering software). Chris established common operating procedures for a Europe wide CFD consultancy team operating from 4 centres and selling to 16 countries. As a result, the consolidated consultancy turnover of UK, German, French and Belgian offices doubled from 1996 to 1997. In 1998 he was appointed Managing Director of Fluent Europe Ltd at a time when the annual revenue was £7M. In 1999 he was appointed to the Vice-Presidential Executive Committee of Fluent Inc., the parent company, which set the strategic direction for the company worldwide. Chris was responsible for the Northern European operations in UK, Scandinavia and Benelux, and a group of Distributors throughout the remainder of a territory that included Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Africa. He was the sponsoring VP for a global group focussing on the Health Care market. In 2006 Fluent was acquired by ANSYS Inc. and Chris’ role was expanded to become the “Regional Leader” in N Europe, responsible for 250 staff dealing with all aspects of ANSYS’ software products and services. Chris took early retirement from ANSYS in 2009 having grown the revenue in his region of responsibility to £70M.

For the University of Sheffield Chris was a lay member of Council, a Non-Executive Director of Sheffield University Enterprises Ltd (the university’s spin-out management company), a Commercial and Industrial Advisor to the Dept of Corporate Relations and chaired the Industrial Liaison Committee of the Dept of Chemical & Process Engineering. At Sheffield Hallam University he was a member of the Materials Research Institute Policy Board.

Chris has been the Non-Exec chairman of a start-up software business in the aerospace sector and a Non-Exec Director of, or Consultant to, other early stage software and internet businesses.

Chris was a Board Member of Yorkshire Innovation. He was involved in a number of other Regional institutions including the Driver Partnership for Priority One of Objective 1 for South Yorkshire. He was a Member of the Boards of Sheffield First for Investment, Knowledge Starts in South Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Science Council and sat on the Steering Committee of the DMS Centre of NAMTEC. He was the founding Vice-Chairman of Digital South Yorkshire.

Chris served from 2001 to 2005 as a non-executive Director of Yorkshire Forward, where his special responsibilities included innovation and technology transfer, cluster development, and Yorkshire Universities (including spin-outs).

Chris was appointed as the European Director of a US based subsidiary of Ricardo Engineering, which specialised in Computational Fluid Dynamics consultancy. He introduced a relatively unknown technology from a foreign company into the conservative markets of Power Generation and Heavy Industry, growing the revenue from zero to $1M in 2 years, meeting all sales targets and establishing a strong position for CFD in the United Kingdom.

GEC entered a joint venture with Alsthom and reorganised along industry lines. Having completed the GEC Senior Management Course, Chris held a number of posts, several of them simultaneously, which included Commercial Manager of European Gas Turbines’ Mechanical Engineering Centre, responsible for the marketing and business development department of a commercially run R&D consultancy with a £12M pa revenue in the international marketplace. In this role he designed and established commercial systems to BS 5750/ISO 9000. Other posts included Project Manager for the Clean Coal Power Generation Group (where he led a £7M pa DTI funded programme for GEC ALSTOM, organising the UK and French partners to establish a work programme, identifying a potential build site and assuring the funding for future years) and Project Director for a project for the US "DARPA" defence agency (where he managed multi-disciplinary teams that succeeded in applying a combination of Fluid Mechanics, Mechanical, Electro-Mechanical, Electronics, Signal Processing and Control Engineering in a major contract aimed at reducing noise from submarine vehicles via a programme extending over 5 years from theoretical feasibility studies to a design/build/test project – without ever missing a performance milestone!).

In 1987, Chris moved into general management as the Manager of the Thermo-fluids Division of the GEC Engineering Research Centre, at a time when GEC were converting their centrally funded laboratories to commercially funded operation providing technology development across a wide range of industries. He successfully changed the mindset of his team of Engineers and Scientists, creating an entrepreneurial climate, diversifying the technology base and rewarding and advancing promising candidates to fill newly generated management positions. He moved his Division into profit within 12 months, building an external customer base with an emphasis on long term and large scale contracts. He turned the business round from 25% loss and grew its revenue fourfold (with >25% ROCE) within 5 years.

Appointed to a lectureship at Durham University, one of the top universities in UK for Engineering education and research, Chris taught Thermo-fluid dynamics, ran a research group studying flows associated with fluidics and turbo-machinery and tutored in the College of St Hild and St Bede. His research group was primarily funded by commercial or commercially associated contracts. He developed a sound understanding of the research environment and acquired exceptional presentation skills, which he went on to apply in a range of sales and marketing environments, covering both products and services.

Chris obtained a PhD in fluid mechanics and then performed post doc studies, sponsored/funded by the UKAEA and BNFL. His work established design rules for vortex flow devices used in ventilation and pumping in nuclear plant.

Chris spent 4 years as an officer in the Royal Navy, establishing his man management and leadership skills.