Vent-Axia has been working with Surrey Choices, an organisation that helps disabled people and those with support needs, to provide work experience for 19-year-old Gabriel Hogan.
Gabriel is autistic, has ADHD and learning difficulties and faced challenges at mainstream college. Surrey Choices’ alternative education programme encourages his strengths and interests and helps them to grow and develop by offering independence at work and helping him with career development.
Gabriel is fascinated by hand dryers and wanted to be able to design a new hand dryer that was quiet, but dried your hands in 10 seconds. Vent-Axia was happy to help and Gabriel has been attending a work experience placement at the company to gain vital experience, learn more about the product design process and to design his own hand dryer.
Over the last month, Gabriel has been working with Sam Gregson, Vent-Axia’s Group Technical Manager for Unitary Fans, to design a hand dryer to Gabriel’s own specific requirements since he has a keen interest in and vast knowledge of hand dryers. Gabriel became interested in hand dryers after initially being scared of them as a child. He is sensitive to noise and while he likes really high-speed, fast hand dryers, he does not like it when they are very loud.
“Gabriel’s knowledge of hand dryers is immense and his understanding is very good – I was very impressed. Gabriel was keen to design a hand dryer that dried in 10 seconds. He had real focus and clarity of vision when it came to the design he wanted to achieve and it was a pleasure to work with him and provide this valuable work experience for him. I’ve worked for Vent-Axia for 20 years, but Gabriel’s knowledge of hand dryers was vast – probably better than mine!” said Sam Gregson group technical manager – unitary fans at Vent-Axia.
“Gabriel has had a wonderful experience at Vent-Axia; he tested a range of hand dryers and with Sam’s help he designed a hand dryer using the software that the engineers use, to design a hand dryer specific to how Gabriel would like one to be. It was an amazing experience for him to gain experience in a working environment. Sam and Richard’s acknowledgement of Gabriel’s knowledge had been great for his self-confidence and he is very eager to take up more work experience opportunities,” said Sarah Oxby, employability and communities manager at Surrey Choices.
0844 856 0590 / www.vent-axia.com
