What we do

Based at Hanslope Park, Milton Keynes, our hundreds of engineers, technologists and scientists invent, make and test vital technologies for use in national security work.

Our work

Designing

Invention is what we do. We are presented with a tech challenge, then we design a bespoke solution to work where it is most needed.

Creating

Whether advanced manufacturing, electronics, power sources, textiles, woodwork or 3D printing, we have hundreds of experts who can craft high quality products often to a fast turnaround.

Testing

The tech we create for national security needs to be robustly tested in-house. We have testing facilities which will test every element of a component’s journey from invention to ultimate use.

Collaborating

HMGCC now collaborates extensively with outside organisations. Industry and academia can work with us directly – helping us keep up with the pace of tech innovation, to keep the country safe.

Our expertise

The quality of technologies we create at HMGCC has to be flawless. National security staff need to be able to rely on our products when they need them most, wherever they are in the world.

The breadth of our work is huge, as is the scope of any technical task we may be set by government on any given day. For this reason, HMGCC is a hub of technological capability, with experts present in hundreds of different disciplines including engineering, manufacturing, electronics, power sources, design, textiles and many more.

Our facilities

Our historic Hanslope Park base is now home to some of the most cutting-edge equipment, capable of swiftly delivering the products and technologies most needed by national security.

The site is campus-like, peppered with large buildings which each enclose world-class facilities and expertise.

As well as buildings devoted to manufacturing, electronics assembly and antennas, new premises have recently been put in place to house the power sources and environmental assurance functions.

Our new Power Sources Centre for Excellence is home to a team which designs, builds and delivers unique power solutions for almost any piece of electronics. If equipment needs to work where there is no mains power and no supply chain for batteries , energy must be sourced somehow – including using resources at our disposal, whether that is solar, wind or water energy.

Facilities at this newly built centre include a collaboration area to host 30-40 people at a time. We already carry out battery research projects with various universities, so this new building means we have the facilities to host some of this work.

Another new building on site is devoted to environmental and electromagnetic testing of products. We have testing facilities here which will test every element of a component’s journey from invention to ultimate use. Importantly, we need our tech to work where and when it is most needed for the designed purpose.

Emerging technologies

HMGCC is a future-looking government organisation, focused on driving innovation wherever it can be found and building its capabilities in new and emerging technologies.

Research and development is an important part of what we care about, both our own and that of others - for example academic institutions.

AI is just one of the emerging technologies in which we invest our focus. It is becoming more and more relevant across a wide range of our engineering disciplines, which means the scope of opportunities and risks is broad. AI is helping us be more efficient in our engineering and also to engineer more efficient capabilities.