Mr Barry Robinson MBE, Chief Examiner and Past National President 2003-2004

Mr Robinson has over 39 years experience of operating mobile plant and associated equipment in the construction and quarrying Industries. His career started as a plant operator employed by major contactors, operating all types of plant on motorway construction, quarrying, opencast coal mining and plant hire. He has also worked as a site foreman and general foreman and was responsible for site personnel and equipment deployment, scheduling of coal output, removal of overburden and site safety. Other site activities involved quarrying operation, overburden removal at various quarry locations and motorway construction.

In 1980 Mr Robinson joined the Caterpillar dealership (Finning UK Ltd) as an equipment demonstrator, instructor and assessor (working in countries such as Cameroon, Holland, Ireland, USA, Poland and France). Additional duties included troubleshooting, advising on product selection, site analysis and operator training and assessment.

In 1995, Mr Robinson was promoted to product specialist and was responsible for all products within Caterpillar’s product range sold in the UK. The role included liasing with Caterpillar on all safety and product performance issues, product development, sales training and fleet production cost analysis. Mr Robinson has been heavily involved with the the development and promotion of 'all round vision equipment' and won an award from the UK's Health and Safety Executive for this work. Although principally based in the UK, Mr Robinson regularly visited Caterpillar centres in the USA, Spain, France, and Belgium.

At the end of 2001 he became self employed as a mobile plant instructor assessor.