The Story of Rapid Welding’s Founder, Rob Edwards

Have you heard the phrase, don’t go into business with family or friends?

If you think about it, working with a sibling or close family member can pose quite a few risks and plenty could go wrong. What if you can’t agree on something important? What if you keep arguing? How do you resolve conflicts or handle disagreements? Important family relationships could be permanently damaged by one bad business decision.

On the flip side, if you can’t go into business with family, who can you trust to run a company with?

It can be a real dilemma, but the truth is, being a blood relative doesn’t always guarantee you’ll be the best of friends.

With an eighteen-month age gap and a completely different circle of friends, Rob and Roy weren’t exactly bosom buddies growing up.

In fact, they didn’t mix at all.

Rob knocked about with his mates, and the same went for Roy.

If they ended up in the same pub on a night out, they wouldn’t spend any time together – they’d be at opposite ends of the bar!

So how did they come together to create a business from scratch and a successful one at that?

Brothers at Arms

Born in November 1959, Rob Edwards is the oldest son of Roy Harry ‘Ted’ Edwards, who was a fleet Armorer in charge of weapons systems in the Royal Navy, and Pat, who worked part-time at the local chemist.

From an early age, Rob had a natural orientation towards electronics – He was always working on radios and other gadgets, making, repairing, or modifying them in some way. One of his favourite hobbies was building crystal sets, the process of making a very simple radio receiver with some wire and a few inexpensive parts, and just like that, you could pick up radio stations!

Although not too far apart in age, Rob and Roy didn’t get on particularly well, and it wasn’t unusual for them to end up fighting or having the odd wrestling match.

There was no real reason for it, just that they were two very different people with very different interests. They weren’t what you would call mates.

While Roy was naturally outgoing and a real people person, Rob was happiest completely absorbed in a technical project, working on his radios, or cars, or mopeds, taking them apart and building them back up.

Rob got his first car when he was sixteen, before he could even drive. This was so he could spend at least six months doing it up exactly how he wanted it – His purple coloured Mini ended up being green with a white roof, which was Mini’s rally colours at the time.

When it came to school, Rob is very modest when he says he didn’t ‘do too badly’. The all-boys secondary school he attended wasn’t great. In fact, it was quite vicious at times and certainly not a nurturing environment to inspire and prepare its students academically. The fact that Rob did so well was very much ‘in spite’ of the education on offer, not because of it, and it was a case of if you wanted to learn anything at all, you had to do it yourself.

The good thing was, Rob knew what he wanted from a very early age, and he knew exactly how he was going to get it.

Rob’s plan was to get onto a Training Scheme, available at three major companies – ASWE, Marconi, and Portsmouth Dockyard. While on the scheme, Rob would be graded on the job, with a view to acquiring a Craft or Technician position within the company.

All he needed was to do well in Maths, Science and Physics at school, which he duly did, and with the necessary subjects passed, Rob joined the training scheme and got the Technician position he wanted.

He was subsequently offered a job with Marconi Space and Defences.

The Marconi Years

While Roy headed off into Welding Engineering, Rob went into the field of Electronic Engineering.

He started off in the Testing and Valuation Department of Marconi’s, where he stayed for four years. After that he moved to Design Authority, a role based at Waterloo Ville with Marconi’s Underwater Systems Division. The work he did there included design and implementation with a trials team, designing, building, and updating naval weapons systems. He got to travel quite a bit with this, alternating between bases in Cape Canaveral, Portsmouth, and Scotland.

The next step was realising designs, working closely with the manufacturing department to iron out any production issues.

It was also around this time that Rob met Julie.

Alongside his best friend, Phil, Rob infiltrated Knowle Mental Health Hospital where Phil’s girlfriend at the time, and Julie, worked as nurses. The hospital had a very good social club, and the bonus was it was open seven days a week and the booze was cheap!

Rob is fairly certain that he spent 1978 to 1982 a little bit drunk!

Not that drunk, though, because in 1984 Rob and Julie married, and they now have two children, James and Camilla.

After thirteen years the contract with Marconi was coming to an end, assignments had been completed and there was a lull between new contracts being placed. Rob didn’t want to wait around.

He was eager for new projects, and he didn’t have a problem leaving. He certainly wasn’t going to wait around twiddling his thumbs.

It was time to look for something else.

Next Steps

While work at Marconi was winding down, Rob set about finding his next challenge.

Out of the blue, Roy contacted him saying there was a position available at ARC Welding in Dorset, where Roy worked in charge of welding sales. They needed someone technical on the equipment servicing side of things, and knowing how good Rob was with electronics, Roy knew his brother would be a good fit.

Rob’s point of view was very much, “a change is as good as a rest’, but joining ARC Welding turned out to be a great decision, because between them, Rob and Roy developed the company beyond expectation.

And there was much more to come.

New Beginnings

Rapid Welding was founded by Rob and Roy Edwards in 1990.

Leaving ARC Welding and going it alone with a new venture was a very big call to make, and one the brothers discussed at length before taking the plunge, but they knew it was the right thing to do.

As siblings who hadn’t been particularly good buddies growing up, it was quite a profound conclusion to come to. While they’d learned to tolerate each other and put the wrestling matches to one side, they hadn’t exactly remained close confidants over the years, and now they were embarking on a new challenge that involved working together, pooling each other’s individual skills and strengths to build a successful business.

In the beginning, it was agreed things would be kept as simple as possible.

For starters, the grand total of staff was two – Rob and Roy.

When it came to deciding who was doing what, that was even easier.

Roy would sell the equipment, and Rob would service and maintain it.

To begin with, Rob recalls that it was ‘all in’ and work took priority seven days a week, with early starts and late finishes because, well, that was just how it had to be.

Of course, this made for a difficult time, especially with a young family growing up. It was, however, time needed to set up a fledgling business and give it every chance of success.

And there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Gradually, work life did get easier, but it wasn’t exactly slowing down. The business grew, which in the following years meant changing buildings to accommodate larger stocks of equipment and extra staff.

In a way, Rapid took on a life of its own.

But for Rob, it wasn’t all servicing and general maintenance. He got to use his creative flair too!
Always up for a technical challenge, Rob designed and built welding equipment from scratch. He created, and still does, lots of bespoke products for customers, such as positioning equipment and anything computer-controlled.

One of the first things Rob made was a plasma welder with a 110-volt yellow transformer – just because he could! It was an experiment, really. Rob had seen what cutting machines were on the market, and the price tag involved. His immediate thought was, “There’s a simpler way, let’s see what we can do!”

“I have always admired Robs depth of knowledge and technical ability with all things electrical. I have seen him design and build things with his mad professor approach that made me smile. He has been a massive help recently with our current projects with the Cobot and CNC cutting table.”  

Andrew Doe / Sales Director

While some of Rob’s designs didn’t make it onto the shop floor, some did achieve commercial success.

The Rapid Plasma Boy was effectively a high-speed tractor for holding a plasma cutting torch, built with modified gas cutting equipment. And it worked! Cheap and cheerful maybe, but it did the job customers needed.

It’s obvious Rob has a passion for innovation, and he’s very driven to create new solutions to modern welding problems. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why Rapid evolved at the pace it did.

And speaking of progress, James, Rob’s son, works at Rapid today. He’s Rapid’s Service Director and has taken over the day-to-day management of the Service Department.

Which might leave you asking, where’s Rob?

Floating Around the Dockyard

Rob is Rapid’s Technical Director, meaning he technically supports everything Rapid does.

New technology, such as Laser Welding and Welding Cobots – new innovations forging ahead in the industry, are Robs ‘baby’, too.

Today, the best place to find Rob is down at Portsmouth Dockyard, and it’s here that he manages a contract Rapid have proudly held for around 20 years.

The Dockyard is essentially Rob’s office, and I get the impression he enjoys himself there very much, overseeing the build, certification and maintenance of some pretty impressive vessels, including Type 45 Destroyers and Aircraft Carriers.

Some say that Rob is borderline genius. He has designations after his name like Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (MIEEE). He’s very affable, modest, and all too happy to chat. But you can sense that beneath the friendly exterior, there’s also an exceptionally clever man with a brain functioning at a higher level to the rest of us.

Rob often refers to Roy as “the MD of Rapid.” This is incorrect, as Roy is very quick to point out – and probably stems from the fact that Rob is at his best concentrating all his attention on a technical project rather than being front of house. This position undoubtedly makes him less visible on an operational basis.

It certainly doesn’t make him any less crucial when those fundamental business decisions are being made, something they always do together.

In fact, Rob and Roy rarely have cross words nowadays, a great leap from the early years of barely tolerating one another.

The relationship between the brothers is actually quite special, and the way they work together should be made into a book called ‘How to Triumph in Business with Family and Avoid the Pitfalls’.

One of the reasons they do so well, is probably because they always back each other’s decisions. Both respect the other’s expertise in their own field, and they’ve always been 100% transparent when it comes to everything Rapid.

And what a success they have made of it.

“Ever since I met Rob, I’ve seen him fix, invent, design, engineer and build a whole raft of projects. What people don’t see about Rob is how much of a true family man he is!”

Stuart Rogers​​​​ / Operations Director