The prestigious Innovate UK KTP Awards which took place on 18 October in Cardiff resulted in a win for the University of Bath’s KTP Associate and graduate, Harley Beattie, who worked on a partnership with Quick Release over the last two years.

Quick Release is a global Engineering Data Management consultancy delivering best practice solutions for Product Data Management (PDM) and business process. Through her role as KTP Associate, Harley helped deliver the University's KTP with Quick Release to improve their PDM efficiency.

Harley, who has a Masters in Engineering with First Class Honours from the University of Bath, delivered an industry leading methodology to grow their internal expertise and IP. This resulted in a 25% resource saving on diagnostic projects, preventing an eight-week client programme delay, and overseas delivery.

Harley Beattie, KTP Associate and Future Leader, says:

This is a wonderful end to two years of hard work with Professor Linda Newnes and Professor Vimal Dhokia from the University of Bath, and David Nickerson and Paul Crabtree from Quick Release. I want to sincerely thank the Bath and QR team for challenging me, empowering me, and providing opportunities that allowed me to travel the world during my KTP.

Professor Vimal Dhokia, Deputy Head of Mechanical Engineering and Director of Knowledge Exchange for Engineering, was the academic lead on the KTP, and Professor Linda Newnes, Head of Costing Research, also from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was the academic supervisor.

Professor Dhokia says:

This KTP was tasked with the creation of a generic methodology to enable Quick Release to accelerate its consultancy offering across different sectors at different scales. This involved Harley working with large multinationals to start-ups. Harley was instrumental in driving this complex project forward, often managing complex data streams and multiple global relationships to generate unique solutions. The benefit of the KTP was considerable to both Quick Release and the University. It allowed for the translation of research ideas and understanding into practical solutions leading to real world impacts.

David Nickerson, Principal Consultant at Quick Release and industrial supervisor on the KTP, says:

It was great getting the chance to work with the University of Bath and innovate UK in a really focussed partnership on one of our business priorities. The impact Harley and the team had has been felt throughout the organisation, setting industry best practice for engineering change management.

The University of Bath KTP with Qualasept was also a finalist in the Business Impact and Transformation category of the Innovate UK KTP Awards. This KTP enabled the company to develop, validate and implement novel methods for the characterisation of therapeutic antibody-drug conjugates. As a result, Qualasept was able to generate a series of new pharmaceutical products of next generation cancer therapies with extended shelf-lives.