Engineering-trained. Trade-fluent.

// The short version

“I trained as a mechanical engineer and spent years keeping complex, hands-on operations running — managing real budgets, real equipment, and real deadlines in heavy industry. I bring that same practical problem-solving, plus modern AI, to growing Island businesses. I speak the language of trades and industry because I've worked alongside it — I understand how things actually get done.”

Heavy industry first

Andy trained as a mechanical engineer — a First Class BEng, then an MSc with Distinction — and spent five years in owner/operator roles at ExxonMobil and Phillips 66. That's not a desk job. It meant being the person responsible for safety-critical systems: keeping rotating equipment, pressure systems and process plants running, managing multi-million-pound maintenance budgets, and answering for the result when something broke at 3am.

In that world you learn two things fast. First, that every improvement has to be measured — opinions don't keep a plant running, numbers do. Second, that nothing gets done without the trades. Anyone who can't talk to a millwright, a welder or a rigger doesn't last. Andy spent his career working alongside tradespeople, planning work with them, and learning how jobs actually get done — not how a flowchart says they should.

Why marketing, and why here

The move to Vancouver Island came with a simple observation: the Island is full of excellent trades, marine and service businesses that are brilliant at the work and invisible online. They lose calls while they're up a ladder or under a hull. They get out-ranked by worse operators with better Google profiles. And the tools that could fix it — local SEO, automated call capture, AI agents — are sold as software subscriptions that nobody has time to learn.

Coastal Munro exists to close that gap as a service. Andy applies the same discipline he learned on industrial systems to a business's growth: instrument it, find where it leaks, fix the biggest leak first, measure, repeat. It starts with marketing because that's where the quickest wins are — and it grows into AI-integrated operations because that's where the lasting advantage is.

What that means for you

• You deal with one accountable person who shows up in person — Sidney to Comox.
• Your systems are built by someone who has actually run operations, budgets and emergencies.
• Everything is measured. If it isn't working, you'll hear it from us first.
• No jargon, no black boxes — you'll always know what's running and why.