Julian Morison took up the position of chief executive officer at engineering recruitment company Wynnwith last week.

He was previously the managing director for contract business at IT recruiter Spring, where he worked for nine years. Morison told <I>Recruiter</I> his first priority is to create a driven "energy and sales" culture at Wynnwith, whose aerospace clients include Airbus, GKN and Rolls Royce.

"We have some fantastic people, but we need to become a more proactive, sales-led organisation," he says.

Wynnwith's annual turnover has nearly doubled in the last four years to over £100m, and Morison believes that the high-margin engineering arena is still ripe for significant future growth.

He plans to steer the business away from a blue-collar focus to a greater emphasis on white collar. He also wants to develop permanent business further. Other plans call for Wynnwith to adopt certain IT staffing principles and practices, such as developing a managed services capability and building its one-off spot placements business. "The state of engineering recruitment is like IT was five or six years ago," Morison says.

Further, he aims to float the company within three to five years.

Wynnwith has traditionally been led by members of the Guinan family. Dan Guinan, Wynnwith's chairman, is the majority shareholder. Morison admits that he has bought into the company for a "not insignificant" amount of money.