Knowledge Hub
Practical engineering knowledge, guidance and resources for people working in UK food manufacturing.
Latest Knowledge
The Eco Engineer: Why Sustainability Is Already Part of Your Job
Why the routine work of a good food factory engineering team is already sustainability work, and how to measure it, justify it and use it to build your career.
Safe Electrical Isolation in Practice: Where Food-Site Isolations Go Wrong
The real-world traps in electrical isolation on UK food production lines (hidden supplies, stored energy, shared panels and untested testers) and how to avoid them.
Thermographic Surveys: Finding Electrical Faults Before They Find You
How to plan, carry out safely and act on thermal imaging surveys of switchgear, MCCs, drives and motors in UK food factories.
Electrical Safety in Washdown Areas: Keeping Water Out and People Safe
How to choose, install and look after electrical equipment in UK food washdown areas: IP ratings, hygienic enclosures, cable glands, RCD protection and cleaning practices.
Planned Maintenance: The Unsung Food-Safety Control
Why planned maintenance is a food-safety control as well as a reliability tool: the legal duty, the cost of downtime, foreign bodies, washdown water ingress and sustainability, plus five practical steps to get it right.
Food-Grade Lubrication: Getting H1, H2 and the Lube Route Right
How to choose, store, apply and control lubricants in a UK food factory so they protect both the machine and the product, and pass BRCGS scrutiny.
Combustible Dust and DSEAR: Explosion Safety in Food Factories
How DSEAR applies to flour, sugar, starch, milk powder and other food dusts in UK sites, and what engineering must control: zoning, equipment, ignition sources and housekeeping.
Metal Detection and X-ray: Engineering’s Role in Foreign-Body Control
What engineering must get right on metal detectors and X-ray systems in UK food factories: installation, fail-safe rejects, testing, maintenance and evidence for BRCGS and customer audits.
The UK Statutory Inspection Calendar for Food Factory Engineering
The legal examinations and tests a UK food site must keep in date (PSSR, LOLER, LEV, electrical, fire, F-gas, X-ray and more) and how to run them as one controlled calendar.
Asset Criticality Ranking: Deciding Which Machines Matter Most
A simple scoring method to rank food-factory assets by safety, food-safety, production and cost impact, so PPM, spares and capital go where they matter.
Legionella Control in Food Factories: What Engineering Owns
How ACOP L8 and HSG274 apply to UK food sites, from evaporative condensers on ammonia plants to hosepoints, crate washers and little-used outlets.
Building Fabric That Protects the Product: Roofs, Walls, Ceilings and Pest Proofing
A practical building-fabric inspection and repair routine for UK food sites, covering roofs, walls, ceilings, doors, windows, condensation and pest entry.
Hygienic Floors and Drainage: The Infrastructure Under Every Food Safety Plan
How floors, falls and drains affect hygiene, Listeria control and slips in UK food factories, and how engineering should inspect, repair and specify them.
Asset Management in Food Manufacturing: More Than Maintenance
A practical introduction to asset management for food manufacturing engineering teams — from lifecycle thinking and criticality to CMMS data, maintenance strategy and better investment decisions.
Permit to Work: Quality Over Paperwork
How to use permit systems as a real risk-control conversation rather than a form-completion exercise.
Contractor Control for Engineering Work in Food Factories
A practical control framework for making sure contractor competence, permits, food-safety boundaries and site interfaces are managed before work starts.
LOTO: Isolation Is Not Complete Until Zero Energy Is Verified
A practical reminder that lockout/tagout is a process of identifying, isolating, dissipating and verifying hazardous energy before work begins.
Engineering Backlog Control: Stop Work Orders Becoming a Storage System
How to turn a growing maintenance backlog into a prioritised, scheduled and accountable work pipeline.
Engineering KPIs: Measure the System, Not Just the Team
A balanced KPI set for reliability, work control, cost and improvement in a food-manufacturing engineering function.
The 15-Minute Engineering Daily Meeting
A practical daily cadence for controlling safety, breakdowns, labour, backlog and production risk without turning the meeting into a long status update.
The First 72 Hours After Commissioning: What Engineering Should Watch
A launch-period checklist for detecting weak points in new or modified equipment before they become accepted defects.
FAT vs SAT: What Each Stage Must Prove
A practical distinction between Factory Acceptance Testing and Site Acceptance Testing for production equipment projects.
The Engineering CAPEX One-Page Business Case
A concise structure for turning an engineering need into a decision-ready investment case focused on risk, value and deliverability.
Hygienic Design and Maintainability: Engineering for Both
Why equipment that is difficult to clean or maintain will eventually create reliability and food-safety compromises, and what to challenge during design review.
Temporary Engineering Repairs: Control Them or They Become Permanent
A disciplined approach to temporary repairs in food manufacturing, including risk assessment, identification, inspection and permanent close-out.
Engineering Readiness for Food-Safety Audits
A practical engineering checklist for demonstrating controlled maintenance, hygienic repairs and equipment integrity during customer or certification audits.
Cold-Room and High-Care Door Losses: A Reliability and Energy Problem
Why door discipline, seals and traffic patterns affect temperature control, evaporator performance, icing and refrigeration energy.
Floating Head Pressure: Efficiency Opportunity With Operational Boundaries
How reduced condensing pressure can cut refrigeration energy while maintaining reliable expansion, oil return and process performance.
Industrial Refrigeration KPIs for an Engineering Team
A practical KPI set for monitoring reliability, efficiency and capacity of industrial refrigeration systems without drowning the team in data.
Building a Water Balance for a Food Factory
A simple method for turning total site water consumption into actionable process, hygiene and utility losses.
Steam System Losses: Five Places to Look Before Buying New Boiler Capacity
A practical engineering review of common steam losses that can reduce usable capacity and increase gas consumption.
Compressed Air Leak Management: Turn a Survey Into Permanent Savings
How to build a repeatable leak-management system so compressed-air savings persist after the first survey.
Automation FAT Checklist for Food Manufacturing Projects
Key checks to complete before automated equipment leaves the supplier, reducing commissioning surprises and production disruption on site.
Machine Vision in Food Manufacturing: Where It Adds Value and Where It Does Not
A practical test for deciding whether cameras and machine vision are the right control for an inspection or automation problem.
PLC and Controls Obsolescence: Build a Risk Map Before It Becomes a Breakdown
A structured way to identify unsupported PLCs, HMIs, drives and industrial PCs before a failure turns into an uncontrolled upgrade project.
PPM Optimisation: Remove Work That Does Not Prevent Failure
How to challenge inherited preventative-maintenance tasks and redirect engineering hours toward work that genuinely protects reliability.
The 24-Hour Breakdown Review: Turning Failures Into Action
A repeatable breakdown-review structure that separates immediate recovery from root-cause learning and ensures corrective actions are actually closed.
Building a Critical Spares Strategy That Actually Reduces Downtime
A practical method for deciding which spares must be held, which can be sourced quickly and which should never be allowed to become a single point of failure.
