The Reece Foundation was launched in 2007 by renowned North East engineer and businessman Dr Alan Reece to promote manufacturing and support education relating to engineering, maths and physics.
A passionate believer in engineering as a provider of prosperity and enjoyable employment, Alan Reece felt it important to encourage students to become enthused and excited by engineering and ultimately inspired to become our engineers of the future.
Dr Reece’s name became synonymous with engineering across the UK after he developed a subsea plough for burying cables and pipelines which was widely adopted during the growth of the international telecommunications market and the exploitation of oil and gas reserves.
He had earlier trained as an apprentice engineer at the Vickers-Armstrong Works before going on to become a lecturer at Newcastle University, where he worked for almost 30 years. After inventing a subsea plough, he went into business setting up Soil Machine Dynamics (SMD) to market the product across the globe. He subsequently acquired Pearson Engineering, which developed mechanically engineered products for the defence market, including mine ploughs.
Alan passed away in 2012 and his family has carried on running the family business, now called the Reece Group, as well as the Reece Foundation. The Trustees of the Foundation feel that it is vital to encourage a new generation of engineers by supporting initiatives and organisations that are closely aligned to the Foundation’s ethos of supporting education in engineering and enterprise in the North East.
