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Mentoring: Charting a course at Argo Engineering
24th Jun 2026
Argo's Emma Shepherd
The company
Argo Engineering Solutions, founded in 2016 by Simon Walley and based at Hythe Marina, Southampton, is a 12-strong team specialising in lightweight structures across composites, aluminium and high-strength steels. The company’s work spans five pillars of expertise: advanced structures, prototyping, high-speed light craft, windships, and hovercraft and air cushion vehicles.
The engineer
Emma Shepherd is one of Argo’s five engineering consultants, and her career illustrates how the company develops its people. Having completed an MEng (Hons) in Marine Technology with Small Craft Technology at Newcastle University in 2020, she had already spent two summers with Argo as an intern before joining as a design engineer, progressing to engineering consultant in September 2024.
Her technical experience encompasses naval architecture and hydrodynamics on concept projects, preliminary design of RIBs to various rule sets, structural assessment against ISO standards, stability assessments, lifting calculations, weight-critical studies and hoverbarge stability feasibility work. She has developed proficiency in