Since the early sixties we have helped a wide variety of companies design and develop market leading products that users still value every day, ranging from the Stanley knife to the Eurotunnel Shuttle.

Today we focus on building long term relationships with large corporations in four market sectors: ‘Medical and Scientific’, ‘Commercial and Industrial’, ‘Consumer’ and ‘Transport’.

We do this through an intelligent approach to design, based on the transparent management of risk, informed decision making, true integration of disciplines and rigorous development processes.

We believe that the outstanding commercial success of the products we help create is dependent ultimately on delivering exceptional value to our clients’ customers.

We provide the right blend of strategic thinking and pragmatism to deliver our clients’ projects successfully.

We balance the creativity and the technical discipline needed to achieve commercially successful product innovation.

Every client is unique. To support our clients, we like to understand them, their place in the market and their ambitions thoroughly.

They combine to create a vibrant fusion of disciplines including designers, mechanical engineers, electronics hardware and software engineers, strategists, social scientists, ergonomists, project managers and prototyping technicians.

Each person is an expert in their own field but has the curiosity, understanding and flexibility to reach across traditional inter-disciplinary boundaries. Our organisational structures and team culture encourage this synergistic blending and integration of specialist skills. Our clients benefit not only from each individual’s depth of knowledge and experience but also from a team whose combined strength exceeds the sum of its individual members’ expertise.

There are no departments at DCA. Our studios, laboratories and workshops have different disciplines working side by side. Over fifty years we have developed an expertise in connecting and integrating the right disciplines, at the right time, in the right way to achieve success for our clients. 

DCA’s dramatic growth over the last fifteen years has been led by Managing Director, Rob Woolston (centre), a leading consultant in medical product design.

Rob joined DCA in 1999 to lead our medical and scientific team, following over twenty years’ experience of award-winning product design. He became Managing Director in 2002 and now manages a board of two other Directors: Rob Bassil (left) and Nick Mival (right), each leading their individual market sectors and skill areas.

DCA’s Directors work together with an exceptional senior management team consisting of Strategic Managers, Sector Managers and Skill Leaders to refine our service offer continuously and assist our clients in delivering highly effective product design to their customers.

DCA is certified to ISO 9001 and 13485.

Successful innovation starts by asking the right questions in the right ways, to develop the best problem statements. To solve these problems we bring together our creative, highly qualified and experienced staff to create bespoke multidiscipline teams. These teams are trained in a wide range of structured creativity processes and techniques that can be used to help them generate and deliver successful solutions.

For over five decades since then we have consistently helped our clients from all regions and market sectors to deliver breakthrough products and experiences from the Stanley Knife to the Euro Shuttle train.

David retired in 1992, but his multidisciplinary philosophy remains a cornerstone of our approach.