In honour of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s 202nd birthday today, I’m reposting why he’s my hero:

Everyone needs a hero - not because your hero is perfect, but because he or she has some admirable qualities or achievements which can inspire you to greater things. My hero is Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Brunel was a 19th century engineer who built the Great Western Railway, the best railway of the times. He built the Great Western, the Great Britain and the Great Eastern - the largest steamships of their age. He built great bridges and tunnels. He made things happen, and his works still stand today as examples of innovation, design, entrepreneurship and execution. In an extensive national poll accompanied by in-depth BBC TV documentaries in 2002, Brunel was voted the second greatest Briton of all time.

Brunel seems to have always been around in my early years. My parents’ families lived near the GWR at Hayes and Hounslow (the local pub was called the Great Western). I studied Computer Science at Brunel University in London. My early career in the UK was at both ends of the GWR - near Paddington Station and Bristol - and Brunel’s constructions were nearby.

Brunel’s life story is as fascinating as his work. The more I learnt about the man, the more I identified with his sense of ethics, his egalitarian elitism, his setting of grand goals (not just his works themselves, but why they were built) and his ability to achieve them.

This weblog is titled after his personal motto ‘En Avant’ - which means “Get Going’. Anyone who knows my leadership style knows that I want to get things going, get started, start delivering value. It will come as no surprise that my private companies (Isambard Ltd and Isambard Investments Ltd) are named after him. I have a small but growing collection of Brunel books, pictures, DVDs and souvenirs. My car number plate is ISAMBD (which has most personalised-plate translators completely stumped).

I even have a life-size banner photograph of the great little man hanging on my study wall - the only place allowed by my family! Top hat, 3-piece suit, cigar, and muddy boots - what an icon!