Percy Johnson Plevin
Percy Johnson Plevin (c1880-1949)
1950 Obituary [1]
"PERCY JOHNSON PLEVIN, who died on 21st March 1949, at the age of sixty-nine, received his early training at the locomotive works of the Great Central Railway Company, where he entered as an apprentice in 1896, and at the Manchester Technical School.
In 1902 he entered the drawing office of the newly formed British Westinghouse Company, with whom he held the posts of draughtsman, turbine representative, and chief of mechanical tendering department until, in 1919, he moved to Cardiff as the South Wales district manager of the Company, which by then had become the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, Ltd.
He resigned this post in 1922 to practice in Cardiff as a consulting engineer, and a year later took into partnership the late Mr. D. Jenkins, also from Metropolitan-Vickers, to establish the firm of Plevin and Jenkins.
His earlier responsibilities involved advice concerning the electrification of, and installation of, surface power-plant for collieries in the South Wales area, and the electrification and general mechanical reorganization of industrial manufacturing concerns, including textiles, in the West of England, while later he became increasingly engaged upon the electrical and mechanical equipment of hospitals.
During this later phase he was responsible to the Cardiff Corporation for the engineering equipment of Llandough Hospital, in which he died, and to the Welsh National Memorial Association, by whom he was retained, for the engineering equipment of the Sully Tuberculosis Hospital.
His last responsibilities before the outbreak of war in 1939 concerned the equipment of the Institute of Pathology for the Welsh National School of Medicine, and the preparation of plans and specifications for the equipment of a Nurses' Home and Gynaecology unit for the Cardiff Royal Infirmary. Its construction was suspended when war was declared, and that enabled him, as Chief Labour Supply Officer in the Cardiff area, to place at the disposal of the Ministry of Labour his specialized knowledge of engineering production, which was utilized to assist in the selection of personnel drafted to the South Wales munitions factories.
Mr. Plevin was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1914, and transferred to Membership in 1918. For fifteen years he was a member of the South Wales Branch Committee, and was elected Chairman of the Branch and Member of Council in 1933. He was the author of a paper on "Engineering Contracts" presented before the Institution, and published in the PROCEEDINGS of 1934. He was also a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers."
E. J. Robson, B.Sc., A.M.I.Mech.E.