Our Current Team

Founder

Born and raised in County Down between Rathfriland and Banbridge, Clifford McSpadden is a high performance and inspiring business leader who, despite losing his father when he was a teenager and ‘blowing’ his A-levels, has transformed the companies he has worked for over a twenty-five year career in the aerospace industry.

“Not achieving the required results in my A-levels was the best kick in the pants I ever received! With a number of my Banbridge Academy classmates I admit to getting lost somewhere along the way that year, but it made me realise that no one is going to do it for you; to succeed you have to do things for yourself.”  

One of three children, Clifford’s father Ray worked for McAlpine Engineering (now Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd), while his mother Barbara raised him and his two sisters. Ray was Clifford’s inspiration for a career in engineering and there’s no doubt that his father’s death when Clifford was just 14, was part of the reason his exam results would later fall short of expectation. It was also the trigger for Clifford subsequently turning his life around.

“In a world of no father it was very easy I suppose to go off the rails but I was very determined to turn things around so repeated the year in Belfast Technical College, now part of Belfast Met.”  

While initially he had been considering a career in civil engineering, along the way Clifford discovered he was passionate about aeroplanes, so he applied instead to study Aeronautical Engineering.  

The teenager who had fluffed his A-levels graduated top of the class in 1985 with a first-class BSc in Aeronautical Engineering and, determined to get away from Northern Ireland which was still in the grip of the Troubles, Clifford applied for just one job – to work on the design of a brand new fighter aircraft. He joined the Military Aircraft division of British Aerospace as an Aerodynamics Engineer, becoming Section Leader of the European Fighter Aircraft Design (Typhoon) just two years later.

With his career in the ascendancy, Clifford went on to become Chief Aerodynamicist with British Aerospace Military Aircraft Ltd in 1989, and subsequently Manager of Airframe Engineering with the company in 1992.

Two years later – almost a decade after joining British Aerospace – and with the offer of a new role in Germany, he realised that his next adventure actually lay back in Northern Ireland and it was time to come home.  

From 1994 to 2003 Clifford worked at Bombardier Aerospace first as Director of Programme & Contracts, then Director of Work and Material Planning before becoming General Manager of the Composites Division. In this role he initiated the challenge to achieve 100% on-time delivery of manufactured components – considered by many an unachievable goal – but eventually succeeding in each of their two standalone facilities.

After 10 years in operations at Bombardier – which Clifford admits was a very different culture, discipline and intensity to his role in England – he had sold his house and handed in notice, as once again change beckoned. Three months later he set off on another adventure, this time to take over B/E Aerospace in Kilkeel, now one of the world's leading manufacturers of aircraft cabin interior products, then languishing at the bottom of international tables and on the brink of going out of business.

Another transformative success story. Another example of Clifford’s leadership. Another adventure completed.  

Despite his successful track record in transforming companies and departments, once again it was time for change.

Then in 2008, following a chance conversation with a business associate, Clifford founded and became CEO of CMS Global Limited, an organisation based in Banbridge that is ‘dedicated to helping others engage and collaborate to make change happen’ across a variety of commercial, public and voluntary sectors, and specialising in the rapidly developing renewable energy market and in particular, wind.

Two years later he founded GWA Supplies – his latest adventure – which now employs 18 people keeping wind farms running internationally.

“We’ve doubled the size of the business in the last two years. Our market is shared, currently one third is in Australasia, a further third in mainland Europe and the final third in the British Isles. It is 100 per cent an export market and I expect it, along with GWA, to continue growing in the coming years.”

With the McSpadden family firmly re-established in Banbridge, Clifford still finds time to practise what he calls ‘practical Christianity’, a belief that is not defined or restricted to attendance at a particular church.

He created Rhythm, a youth outreach programme that saw some 2800 young people come through the doors over 11 years, providing them with sanctuary from drug and alcohol dangers on the streets.

In more recent years, Clifford helped found Water Drops, a charity which brought clean water to villages in Kenya, and in January 2023 he delivered 250 electrical generators to people in need in Ukraine.

Editorial Credit: Queens University Belfast

https://daro.qub.ac.uk/Clifford-McSpadden--lifelong-adventurer