News

Paul Dolan

Age: 36

Education: MEng chemical engineering, Loughborough University
Job title: Chief executive of GdHS
Salary: E 3,000 per month for the last four months. Hopes to rise to C 125,000 a year from September.

Work rate: Easing its way down to a 75 hour week.

Relaxation: 'I don't have time for relaxing. The last time I sat down with a bottle of wine was about a month ago.'

Vehicles owned: Ford Escort

DOLAN ESTABLISHED the technology start up, GdHS, with a colleague he met while studying for his MBA. who had spotted a gap in the market for a method of transporting chilled or frozen foods through the post.

Dolan came up with the design for the product, Friobox, and the company was set up a year ago. He forecasts that GdHS will have a turnover of £750,000 this year, rising to about £30m next year. The company already has two factories in Europe, one in Mexico, and is establishing plants in Korea and Japan.

Setting up a technology start up speeds your career progression, according to Dolan. 'If the company expands quickly you can rapidly find yourself heading up a substantial business, whereas working your way to the top of a large company can take years. You can end up in the dead man's shoes situation, where it is not until someone at the top pops their clogs or retires, that everybody else can move a rung up the ladder,' he adds.

Although the number of young highflying engineers is growing, it remains small compared to sectors such as accountancy and finance. Dolan attributes this to the pleasure engineers take in their technical work.

There are only a small group of engineers that actually make it to the top, because there are so many other interesting things to do in engineering. In a lot of careers there is not much else to do but get to the top because there are no other challenges.