David co-founded and became Managing Director of Perceptive Engineering Ltd (PEL) in 2003. PEL specialises in the delivery of Intelligent Process Control & Monitoring systems in the Pharmaceutical and Environmental sectors. Perceptive was acquired by Applied Materials in November 2020 and now operates as a Business Unit within the Automation Products Group.
David is on the board of a variety of process industry steering groups, including the Innovation Strategy Team, Continuous Manufacturing and Crystallisation Centre, Research Centre for Pharmaceutical Engineering, and Process Control and Analytical Measurements Apprenticeship scheme.
Perceptive expanded into Asia, US and Ireland over the past 6 years, where David has developed the company with partners such as Pfizer, GSK, Takeda, Moderna, Mondelez, Unilever and Abbott Nutritional’s to be recognised as one of the leading Advanced Process Control companies in the pharmaceutical and formulated product sectors.
Having recently published in the Parliamentary Review the benefits of government investment in manufacturing within the Process Industries, and the need for collaborative engagement, as demonstrated through the AMSCI an ISCF projects, he continues to push for greater government support on Industry 4.0 initiatives.
With a career of over 30 years in engineering and innovative business leadership, David became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineers, where he continually supports diversity in Engineering, international membership, and the development of entrepreneurial engineers within the UK.
He has published numerous peer reviewed papers and technical articles including “AIChE Advanced Process Control workshop‐moving APC forward in the pharmaceutical industry”, “Improving Quality and Profitability with Evaporators and Dryers using Advanced Control Technology”, “Adaptive on-line moisture control of flash drying processes”, “An econometric approach to justifying advanced process control projects”, An Integrated Approach to Advanced Process Control with Process Monitoring” and Statistical Process Monitoring of Industrial Batch Processes” and “Process Analytical Technologies and real time control; A review of some spectroscopic issues and challenges”; “APC for Hot Melt Extrusion”; “Advanced control of a continuous oscillatory flow crystalliser”.