What we do…

Watney Consulting is a mechanical and electro-mechanical engineering consultancy specialising in helping you make your product ready for production through sourcing and designing production-ready components and assemblies.

With over 20 years of industry experience, across multiple sectors,  we aim to provide a lean and agile approach to product development. An iterative process that embraces failure as an essential tool to creating the most innovative and optimised solutions.

We can help you investigate and define your requirements in the first place – putting flesh on the bones of a product-level function from which we can distil the component level requirements against which a robust design can be formed.

We take pride in solving knotty problems where an off-the-shelf solution doesn’t exist, and/or where what does exist would be prohibitively expensive in production.

We aim to design from scratch a solution that you can take forward at a component-level 100% owned by you. Design for mass manufacture (DFM) and Design for assembly (DFA) are our bread-and-butter.

We have particular expertise in developing small-to-medium sized motor drive systems and all types of electro-mechanical actuation, especially where power density and light weight is key. This includes bespoke gear drive design and analysis, and the electronic control where appropriate. We also offer CFD services for the generation of geometry for rotodynamic pumps, blowers, propeller elements etc.

We are able to introduce you to some of the world’s largest motor manufacturers from whom we can source fully documented prototype motors to meet your precise specifications and always with an eye on the ability to take them forward in production volumes.

We’re able to produce prototype parts and assemblies in the UK and around the world via partners we know and trust, and design and build test and validation equipment for your needs.

Please get in touch to discuss your requirements and we can help define the right solution for you, and set about delivering it in a timely manner.

What we do…

Design consultancies are everywhere. We aren’t one of them.

We specialise in helping you develop and improve the mechanical and electro-mechanical elements or mechanisms within new and existing products. We’re as happy working with design consultancies as we are directly with clients.

We help you make your idea work.

With our help, you can develop your product through any of the following:

• design it from scratch 
• improve what you already have 
• optimise it for production in small or large volumes
• fix reliability issues
• make it the right shape
• make sure it doesn’t cost too much
• make it as small, light, quiet and efficient as needed
• build fully functional prototypes
• design, build and run test rigs to validate the prototypes

In particular we specialise in the blank-canvas sourcing, design and development of bespoke motor and gear drive sub-assemblies, up to and including their control electronics and embedded software. 

From robots to home automation, ventilation systems to vacuum cleaners, classic car components to toys. 

Let us help take the stress out of developing your product. 

We call it Product Engineering.

Lean and agile development

Lean product development hails from the software industry and centres on the “minimum viable product” which can be objectively tested both for intended operation and customer feedback, and rapidly re-engineered over multiple iterations. Learning from failure is central to this approach, and one of the most challenging mindsets to adopt.

Put very simply, Agile is the method by which different parts of a product are developed simultaneously, and the challenge is managing the complex interaction between teams constantly moving each-others’ goal-posts.