The Master 2008-2009
Dr Keith H Williams

BA(Hons) MSc PhD DSc FREng CEng FIElecE FIMechE

Keith is part of the sixth generation of an old Welsh Tinplate family who worked for the Mellingriffith Tinplate Company from the early 1830’s until the company’s closure after the Steel Industry was nationalised in 1947. Had that nationalisation not taken place Keith would have undoubtedly followed the family tradition and been apprenticed in Mellingriffith himself. Keith found himself in London as the War started when his Father, an Engineer trained in Mellingriffith, was directed into Aircraft Manufacture in the London area by the wartime Ministry for Aircraft Production.

At the time of the London Blitz he was evacuated back to Tongwynlais where he spent the war years, returning to his family in London in 1947. He was educated in West London and gained his Technical Training as an Apprentice Toolmaker with the Napier Aero Engine Company. He attended the Brunel College of Advanced Technology (now Brunel University), and later Loughborough University and then Cardiff University, where he gained his Doctor of Philosophy Degree. Keith also holds a Doctor of Science Degree (Honoris Causa) from the University of Westminster, and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

During his professional life Keith worked in many overseas locations in both North and South America, in the Middle East, and in many European Countries. He spent almost fourteen years with the Perkins Engines Group in Peterborough, where he was Production Director and later Chief Executive UK Operations being responsible for some 11,000 employees in seven different plant locations.

Keith and his wife Janet have been married for forty-nine years and they have two daughters, both now married and with their own families. Keith is a Freeman of the City of London and has been a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Engineers for the last twenty-three years. Keith and Janet have lived in Llandaff for the last twenty years, just two miles from the site of the old now long vanished Mellingriffith Tinplate Works.