Ken Hurst began his career as a journalist in London before moving to Africa to work on the post independence publishing Zambianisation programme.

On returning to the UK his work included spells on newspapers and magazines, before moving to head up Norwich Union’s corporate affairs division.

In the 1990s he moved on to co-own and publish the B2B audio magazine Sound and front the BBC radio Yesterday’s Papers programme. There followed six years as Business Editor at Britain’s biggest selling regional daily newspaper, The Eastern Daily Press, where he led an award-winning team and for which he still contributes a weekly comment column. Before joining Findlay Publications, he was group editorial director at CBM, responsible for its UK and US magazine output, research-driven industry reports and live events content.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Commerce and Manufacture and of the British Association of Communicators in Business, and a media associate of the crisis management company SCS plc.

Laura joined Findlay Publications in 1995. Previously associate editor on Service Management, a field service engineering title, she moved to Works Management in October 1999 and was appointed managing editor in 2005.

Laura’s role as a writer and editor on the magazine requires a working knowledge of all the topics that the magazine covers, but she has specific responsibility for materials handling and logistics. She is also responsible for managing the day-to-day tasks for the magazine, including planning and commissioning features.

When not at work, golf is the name of her game.

Graham Pitcher has worked as a journalist and editor for 28 years. Whilst he has mostly covered the electronics industry, he also has broad expertise in computer aided design, industrial automation and computing technologies. For the past 14 years, he has been involved with the development of New Electronics and has edited the magazine for more than 10 years. Recently, he has been appointed group editor of FM's Design Group, responsible for New Electronics and Eureka magazines.

An engineer by training, he has worked in the steel and petrochemical industries.

Amongst his many language skills is the ability to say 'it is snowing' in Welsh

With no interest at all in football, he spends his weekends in a trance like state, willing Mondays to come around again. In his brief moments of consciousness, he exhibits fanatical devotion to the life and times of the Egyptian Vulture.

Fifty five year old Brian began his career involved with data acquisition, sensors and SCADA technology in the utilities and process sectors. After several years in technical PR and marketing, he became Editor of Control and Instrumentation magazine in 1984, where he spent 14 years keeping instrument, control and plant engineers and system developers and integrators informed of plant monitoring and control technologies, standards and industry issues. Focus areas included: control systems, PLCs, advanced control systems, simulation systems, sensors, plant networks, intelligent transmitters, valves and drives.

He joined Findlay Publications in January 1998 as Editor of Manufacturing Computer Solutions, covering business, engineering and manufacturing IT systems and technologies. Since that time, he has also been responsible for running the associated MCS website, weekly e-zine news feeds, industry and business conferences, special publications and Boardroom Reports – and for researching and writing manufacturing business IT features for sister title Works Management.

Early in 2007, he also took over responsibility for Plant Engineer, with a professional engineering audience, covering issues around the specification, installation, commissioning, certification, operation and maintenance of plant – in sectors ranging from manufacturing to the process industries, the utilities, transportation and the military.

Brian is a Chartered Engineer, Member of the Institute of Measurement and Control and Fellow of the Institution of Plant Engineers and Society of Operations Engineers.

When Brian isn’t writing and collecting letters after his name, he is usually found at the local gym, he intends to live forever……so far so good!

Fifty-four-year-old Andrew has spent all his working life involved with manufacturing and has wide engineering and technical publishing experience. He started his career in engineering manufacturing as an apprentice before rising to be the youngest ever production engineering manager at Amphenol, Whitstable, Kent in the late 70s. He won two national and one international company awards for his cost reduction projects at the company. He also introduced advanced CNC technology and novel special-purpose machines, both for machining and for assembly. Andrew also gained technical sales experience in a career break from Amphenol with two electrical/electronic connector manufacturers – Pye Connectors and AMP.

He entered publishing in 1985, joining Machinery. Since that time, in addition to writing for Machinery he has been involved with numerous additional publishing projects, both paper and electronic (CDs, then web), plus other non-publishing activities relating to classification schema development. He has travelled widely, visiting manufacturing companies all over the world.

Andrew became editor of Machine Tool Selector then its successor, Machinery.co.uk, in the mid-90s and editor of Machinery in 2003. In 2008 he oversaw the launch of Engineering Apprentice, for which he also writes.