When first commissioned to deliver a project, we don’t always have a clear methodology. And perhaps more startlingly, at the outset, we don’t always know if what we’re going to create is going to work.
This predicament isn’t a new development for us, it has been this way for decades. We cure this conundrum with a combination of two known antidotes. Bravery and engineering. Bravery is a great mindset, but it’s actually engineering that saves the day.
In our recent video about the 2026 Winter Olympic Cauldrons, our Engineering Director, Nic Kidd, was clear about what engineering means to Stage One.
“Engineering is about understanding how things are going to fail and then making sure that they don’t.”
This statement is worth unpacking. Understanding how things might fail can be done in many ways. The traditional route, which we still follow, is utilising our decades of experience. We often know, in our gut, how and why things might fail. It’s a great starting point.
We then generally move to modelling the proposed approach in increasingly sophisticated computer software. These are excellent tools and really help to expedite the design development process.
The learning really begins when we get to prototyping and testing. A test rig doesn’t have to be full size, it will rarely look pretty, and it usually has to be done quickly. But if things are going to fail during test, better that they fail quickly.
Test and learn is a great phrase in this context. It’s not unusual for us to swap parts, switch materials, and adjust dimensions during the prototyping process. In mechanical systems, even shaving a tenth of a millimetre from a component can make a world of difference.
Sometimes, where time is pressing, prototypes may become part of the final solution. This is often our preference and is the most environmentally friendly approach. Other times, the prototype will have to be abandoned during the soak testing process. Either the testing process continues to destruction, or the prototype doesn’t perform as expected. And so the development forks as a new design iteration begins.
Instigating a new design iteration is exactly what happened during the development of our most recent Winter Olympic Cauldron. The development window was so tight that the second prototype began in the full knowledge that this would be the final deliverable. So much so, it was never referred to as a prototype.
Second time around, there was no room for failure and so we made sure it didn’t. The learning from the first prototype helped tremendously. As did a healthy dose of bravery.
Watch our video documenting the making of the 2026 Winter Olympic Cauldron here
