Moving to Dunedin hasn’t been a homecoming for industrial design consultant Tim Gluyas, but he is feeling right at home.

His wife Anne Mannion, a senior speech therapist, has a strong connection with the city, having lived here for a number of years after initially emigrating to Invercargill 20 years ago, before moving to Dunedin, which quickly became her spiritual home.

Former university friends, the pair reconnected about 10 years ago and Anne always made it clear that a return to Dunedin was high on her wish list.

Tim, who had founded the highly successful UK-based industrial design company Canard Design Limited in 1995, required little persuasion to take on the challenge of setting up a New Zealand branch of the company and is convinced he has picked absolutely the right place to do it.

A large part of Canard’s core business is within the healthcare and scientific industries, says Tim, so he feels right at home working out of the University of Otago’s Centre for Innovation.

“I cannot believe the wealth of capability buried in this city. The medical and clinical research output is astonishing,” he says.

“For the past 25 years I have been working with universities and latterly with the National Health Service in the UK but I have never experienced a place like Dunedin before.”

Canard, with its core staff of five plus a number of specialised associates, has worked with a wide range of clients over the years, from what Tim describes as the ‘Fred in a shed’ inventors, all the way through to large companies and organisations.

That has meant working within a diverse range of specialties with equally diverse specifications, outcomes and deliverables. This has ranged from the extensive redesign and development of existing products in order to improve performance, ergonomics and economy all the way through to leading edge innovation in new and original products.

Most recently Canard Design worked in close collaboration with a UK client in the design, development and implementation of an industry leading particle sensing unit. The final outcome resulted in a lower cost but higher performance product which thoroughly met the needs of the end user.

Collaborating with a health industry supplier they developed an injection moulded plastic arm splint to remove the need for costly and time-consuming wet plaster casts. Invisible to x-rays it also has the added bonus of a special lining that can move and change shape to allow for swelling and avoid complications.

Virtual reality products have also figured large in their work, designing virtual cricket and football challenges, including the special helmet, equipment and interface required to make the game playable.

Tim is equally excited by Dunedin’s already well established design culture which has been brilliantly nurtured by both the University of Otago’s Department of Design Studies and Otago Polytechnic’s School of Design.

He is also impressed by the engineering resource and capabilities of local companies such as Scott Technology and Farra Engineering who already have an established international reputation.

“The capability and resource is here to make a huge impact on the local and national economy.”

Tim admits it would be simple to make a reasonable living by supplying his skills back into his UK clients but that is not what drives him.

“It is the opportunity to collaborate with local individuals and companies to legitimately explore and mutually exploit the resources, intellectual endeavor and capability that are here that challenges and excites me.”

Tim says that having office space in the University of Otago’s Centre for Innovation has given him stimulating daily contact with other innovators, as well as feedback and support.

“The people you meet and the technology you come across just blows me away. It is the most fertile environment I have ever been in.”

Tim and Anne are also enjoying the positive lifestyle change, choosing to live about 30 minutes north of the city on a half-acre section in the seaside town of Waikouaiti.

“I used to take 55 minutes to drive just 12 miles to work in the UK – even though half the trip was through countryside.

“I now have a beautiful journey in and it is no distance at all.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Profile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.