Before joining Markel Tax, Simon was the director of innovation and writing for an engineering consultancy.
He created a business practice to make new product development (NPD) affordable for SMEs. Product offerings included winning R&D grants for technically high risk projects as well as grants to commercialise new products and secure capital equipment.
Projects have been technically very broad, ranging from the development of high performance electric vehicles to fully articulating myo-electric prosthetic hands.
Over the last 15 years, Simon has written and negotiated contracts for many R&D grant funded projects with budgets ranging from £100,000 to £3m.