Change is a constant theme in business and it’s how people respond to it that is important

AS CHIEF executive of Boeing Shanghai, Irishman Bernard Hensey is at the heart of the great aerospace battleground that is China, where competition is fierce between Boeing, Airbus and with China’s own domestic aircraft also looming in a few years. It’s the fastest growing market in the world and one that changes beyond recognition every six months.

Born in Sutton, the youngest of six, the Dubliner studied mechanical engineering at Trinity before joining the exodus overseas in 1986, in his case to Wolverhampton to work for GKN.

“There was absolutely no work in Ireland then. Of 28 in my class, one person stayed in Ireland, and he was doing a Masters. If you wanted to work, you had to go away,” says Hensey.

After two years in the United Kingdom, Hensey realised he was more interested in the business side, and went to Manchester Business School to do an MBA. After that came work with Cummins Engines in the UK, where he became involved in mergers and acquisitions and business restructuring.

In July 1996, Hensey joined Pratt Whitney as a sales manager, and then joined Team Aer Lingus. A formative experience.

“I have great admiration for the workforce at Team Air Lingus. There was conflict, but we worked hard with the workforce and brought the business to break-even. We’d a very good team; the people who joined Team Aer Lingus were fundamentally smart people. It built on a legacy built up over time,” he says.

These were busy years for aviation in Ireland. On the development of aviation and, of course, the experience with Guinness Peat Aviation, Hensey talks of “creative destruction”. He believes lessons must be learned from events such as the collapse of Digital in Galway.

“Look at what’s happened to GPA, the jobs and the value it has created. You take the leasing industry that’s present now in Ireland, it’s larger than it would have been. The same happened with Digital in Galway – the amount of people who were ex-Digital who have established successful businesses out of the collapse, the current situation has to take that into account. Change is constant and it’s how you react to it thats important,” he says.

Boeing Shanghai’s activities include engineering, aircraft maintenance and modification, component repair and overhaul and material management on Boeing aircraft at regional and international airlines as well as domestic Chinese airlines.

It was set up in 2006 and is a joint venture between the Seattle aviation giant, the Shanghai Airport Authority and China Eastern Airlines, and it is majority owned by Boeing.

From 2006, Hensey worked in a number of start-ups until August 2009 when the Boeing move began. “I was working as an entrepreneur and the opportunity in Shanghai came out of the blue. I spoke to my wife Emer and she nearly fell out of her chair. The more we thought about it, the more interested we became. I’d been out to China a number of times, I was intrigued by it.”

Hensey commuted from Dublin for almost a year, before taking over as chief executive.

“When I joined there had been no business, no facilities, now we’re employing over 600 people and we’ve customers in a number of different countries around the region,” he says.

“We are developing the business plan where we are trying to take a lean maintenance operation and combine it with the best from China and Boeing,” he adds.

Hensey maintains strong links to the Irish Software Association and Trinity College’s engineering faculty.

“The key thing is how to take that core value in Ireland, which has moved from manufacturing to research, and how to commercialise that for the benefit of Ireland. The detachment of the financial sector and the property sector from that used to blow me away,” he says.

He has horror stories of bankers whose obsession with property and unwillingness to try and understand technical concepts blinded them to the value of tech start-ups.

“When . . . were with AMT software company in Dublin, we were looking to raise money from our bankers. And they said if we wanted to buy our building we were fine, but they could not fund the cash flow in our business. There was complete detachment. On the venture side, I looked to raise money from all the financial institutions but they usurped the situation.

“The detachment of that side of the economy and Ireland won’t get it right until the whole business community pulls together and the finances are connected to the technology and connected to the multinationals. If anything is to change it’s to get that connection right,” he says.

“I’ve lots of friends who work in the multinationals who are the real bedrock of the economy.

“As long as the multinational sector thrives in Ireland we will be fine. But on the other hand you have the property bubble, which was a false economy detached from the real value creation.

The trick is how to match and keep everything moving together. The industrial policy has to be much longer term. I hope Ireland builds on its aerospace heritage. There are great companies there,” he said.

He is convinced that to thrive in China, Ireland cannot play its old game of working on contacts and reputation as a pleasant country on the periphery of Europe. Britain and France have historical links in China but not Ireland, so a new approach is needed.

“The hail-fellow-well-met stuff doesn’t work here. It’s the ability to trade internationally, that’s our biggest strength here. But it has to be presented in an incredibly professional way and we have to transact quickly. There is a cultural connection and the Irish and Chinese are similar. We both industrialised late and we both ancient cultures that are relationship oriented. In a lot of ways the Ireland of the 1960s and 1970s is much closer to China,” he says. “Irish businesses have to take China seriously long term. To break Beijing and to break Shanghai is going to take a long time. But Ireland has different strengths – technology and RD. There is huge interest in why Ireland is doing well in research and the Chinese are crying out for research and intellectual property.”