Steve Timms From a 16 year old apprentice to delivering contracts worth billions, in-Cumbria speaks to new BAE boss Steve Timms about the future of Barrow shipyard in its 150th year. This year BAE plans to recruit another 850 apprentices, the majority of them in the north of England. It’s a recruitment scheme Steve Timms, the new managing director of BAE Systems Submarines, strongly believes in. After all, he worked his way up from entering British Aerospace’s apprenticeship scheme at the age of 16 with eight ‘good’ O-Levels to overseeing billion-pound defence contracts and employing thousands of people. “I was a bit fed up of school,” he said. “I was my father’s disappointment,” he jokes, saying he had two brothers at university but decided to follow his dad into British Aerospace where he became a craft apprentice. He quickly moved off the shopfloor and into management. After a decade learning on the job he attended the University of Warwick to do a Masters in Engineering Business Management and then went on to take some senior leadership positions on some of the company’s biggest and most high profile contracts, including Eurofighter Typhoon. “It was a once in a lifetime experience, it was hard yards. When I started out in my career I never imagined…you find your own way in life, as soon as I got to work I found a motivation,” he said.