2

MIRANDA SPEAKS OF

A BRAVE NEW WORLD

Grimley Smith Associates’ website displays a sepia
photograph of their head office in Edwardian times
when it functioned as one of Scunthorpe’s first ever
car showrooms. Bizarrely the business proudly advertises
the Belsize, an early symbol of vehicular chic in
Britain whose manufacturer went into liquidation soon
after the First World War. But this venerable antecedent
and Grimley Smith’s Dickensian name deceive. For GSA,
as it is also known, was established as recently as
1992 by a Mr Grimley and a Mr Smith.

The company offers far more complex technical services
than the sale and repair of old jalopies. It
specialises in chemical-engineering applications for the
energy and pharmaceutical industries, and is recognised
as one of Scunthorpe’s most successful young
companies that now boasts a worldwide presence.

GSA’s two founders comprised the total original
workforce, which has since expanded to include several
dozen highly skilled engineers. Like all businesses
where success drives expansion, GSA grew in an
exciting but haphazard fashion. Its engineers would
be contracted to mammoth projects in places as far
apart as Iran, China and Venezuela. The specialist
nature of their work and the zero room for error
in their calculations required some powerful computer
programs. In particular, they ran so-called CAD
(Computer-Aided Design) software that offered intricate
2D and 3D simulation of projects.

By the middle of 2007 the company had reached a
stage where it desperately needed to manage its computer
infrastructure. Outsourcing its maintenance and security
was proving an expensive option, and the company
found the management of all its various cyber needs ever