Britain’s secret tech centre wins special award from the RAE

George Williamson, CEO of His Majesty’s Government Communications Centre, accepted the President’s Special Medal for Engineering in the Service of Society from the Academy’s President, Professor Sir Jim McDonald GBE FREng FRSE.

As the home of national security engineering, HMGCC, based at Hanslope Park near Milton Keynes, works on all the latest technological challenges, from cyber security and AI to creating tech to help with intelligence gathering or secure communications in often dangerous or hostile locations. 

HMGCC was founded in 1938 as a specialist organisation for overseas wireless communications. Its remit was to set up a secure communications capability with overseas outposts in the event of war with Germany. The legendary mathematician Alan Turing lived and worked at Hanslope Park in the latter part of the war – creating a new encryption device called Delilah and testing it out for visitors by playing a record of Churchill’s speeches through it.

The first concealed radio transmitter was developed at HMGCC and a later version, small enough to be hidden in a diplomatic bag, was used on 1st September 1939, from the UK embassy in Warsaw, to inform the UK Government that German troops had crossed the Polish border. 

By 1945 the organisation had some 7,000 staff with a wide variety of skills, including a production factory enabling the design and manufacture of bespoke equipment needed throughout the war. 

To this day, HMGCC continues to play a vital role in national security and strives to attract the most brilliant minds. While much of its work is highly classified, the recent HMGCC Co-Creation initiative has enabled it to open its doors more widely to external industry and academia, inviting them to participate in working on national security challenges.

Professor Sir Jim McDonald, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said: “The President’s Special Awards are made to celebrate only the most unusual achievement of excellence in engineering – the last time we presented them was during the Covid19 pandemic. 

“HMGCC’s work has been undertaken under the tightest levels of secrecy for eight decades. Indeed, it is a mark of its success that so few of us outside the national security community really knew what it did and most of its history and work remains secret. This award recognises the excellence of HMGCC’s engineers – past, present and future – whose work may never otherwise be publicly acknowledged.”

George Williamson, CEO of HMGCC, said: “We, at HMGCC, feel very grateful to have received this honour from the Royal Academy of Engineering. Thousands of engineers and technologists have worked at HMGCC since its foundation in 1938, contributing amazing feats of invention for national security.

“Over the decades and, for obvious reasons, we have always had to keep silent about our important work in keeping the country safe.  But this medal is an important public acknowledgement of the incredible innovators we have at HMGCC. I’m so proud of this work and I’m delighted that their contribution to society has been recognised with such a special award.”