Churchill Medal Winners 2023
The annual Churchill Medal Award (CMA) ceremony was held on Thursday, 2 November 2023 at IET London: Savoy Place.
Guests attended from across the Armed Forces and MOD, the Joint PEIs and this year’s sponsors for the event, L3Harris. A photo gallery from the evening can be seen on Flickr.
The CMA is the most prestigious award for engineering and innovation in the Armed Forces and MOD and is awarded every year on behalf of the Joint Professional Engineering Institutions (PEIs).
This year, we were fortunate to have received a remarkable array of nominations, leading to the selection of five exceptionally deserving finalists.
The finalists’ citations were read by former IET President and Chief of Material Sir Julian Young before he presented the medal to the winners.
The 2023 award was won by HMS Audacious and C-Squadron DTXG Main Vent Repair Team, Submarine Service and Diving and Threat Exploitation Group, The Royal Navy.
HMS Audacious’ unprecedented 11-month Mediterranean Deployment was in direct response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
They were tasked to repair the recurrent failures faced by the Main Vent Operating Mechanisms inside partially flooded Main Ballast Tanks as these defects significantly impacted Audacious’ ability to safely conduct covert operations. In addition to the environmental constraints, Audacious had to remain within a fixed readiness profile throughout, which meant the team had to be able to fully revert the system or complete the repair within a limited timeframe to enable sailing.
This tremendous technical challenge required significant adaptations to existing processes and the generation of bespoke procedures as similar repairs had only ever previously been attempted in a UK Dry Dock, with full access into the Main Ballast Tanks for specialist technicians to work on the mechanisms.
From arrival to completion of testing, the entire process was completed in 19 days. In successfully conducting these highly complex operations underwater, the team ensured that Audacious remained in theatre delivering vital National Tasking for a further 6 months.
The Audacious team shared: “It’s a massive privilege and we feel honoured and proud of ourselves to have won such a prestigious award. A lot of the day-to-day jobs that we do we never talk about so it’s a great acknowledgment and recognition for what we do. It makes us proud for ourselves on the platform and the divers who supported us throughout the deployment.”
Commanding Officer of HMS Audacious, Commander James Howard, said: “The dedication, innovation and engineering professionalism demonstrated by the team in the face of extreme pressure and under challenging conditions is truly outstanding. Their actions made a direct and significant contribution to operational availability and strategic capability, and they are considered highly worthy of recognition.”
This year’s exceptional finalists were:
Staff Sergeant Charlie Pengilley, Corps of Royal Engineers, The British Army
SSgt Pengilley is a Clerk of Works serving in 38 Headquarters and a Support Squadron in the 26 Engineer Regiment.
He worked closely with the 5 RIFLES Training Delivery Unit (TDU) to design and deliver a trench system on Salisbury Plain which would significantly increase the realism of training provided to Ukrainian volunteer recruits preparing for combat operations against Russia.
High Risk Operations Cell, The Royal Air Force
The High-Risk Operations Cell (HROC) were tasked to inspire, design and manufacture a bespoke solution which would support a highly classified project through innovation to achieve a global strategic effect.
The team offered tactical expertise in support of engineering ingenuity and took an innovative approach to risk management, along with a subsequent assurance process to articulate the unique nature of the task while being in a confined and classified environment within a busy operating base.
1710 NAS Data Exploitation Team, comprising a team of three from The Royal Navy, and one Ministry of Defence Civil Servant within 1710 Naval Air Squadron
1710 NAS is a forward support Squadron providing a variety of capabilities comprising globally deployed aircraft repair, modification design, material science and aircraft monitoring including vibration and wear debris analysis.
The team developed a game-changing application named Motherlode for defence aviation, developed to help increase aircraft availability through cleansing and processing the vast amounts of stored maintenance data.
Lieutenant Commander Anthony Gilroy, The Royal Navy
Lt Cdr Gilroy was tasked to improve the design changes of the embodiment to provide continued availability, capability, and safety of nuclear submarines.
This would improve the opportunities to provide higher safety, reliability of equipment and, crucially, the essential capability insertions through life which ensure the Royal Navy’s submarines remain at the cutting edge to maintain the operational advantage.
We congratulate all the finalists and the winning team and would like to thank all who attended this year’s ceremony and contributed to the evening being a huge success.
The Churchill Medal is awarded jointly by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST), the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS), the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), the Institution of Royal Engineers (InstRE), the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Society of Operations Engineers (SOE) and the British Computer Society (BCS).
