When I was approached by The Queen's Awards Office for ideas for a fellowship, it brought to mind a particular idea I had nurtured for quite a while for a new garment to help enhance safety of children and hopefully prevent some untimely deaths.

I was conscious that, unfortunately, a considerable number of children are seriously injured and some are killed when crossing roads. Others sadly die from drowning. In fact, figures recently released show that 132 children lost their lives in road accidents alone in the 12 months to October 2005.

In designing life-saving garments and other military equipment I had always thought it would be a good idea, but a real technical challenge, to design a multi purpose jacket that children would like to wear, while at the same time increasing their safety.

Like most people these days we are always rather busy, but the idea has never gone away, and the request for ideas was a spur to take the concept further.

The problem with life jackets is that to meet the appropriate technical safety requirements they must be incredibly strong. However, the wrong design could literally severely damage or kill a child due to the sheer power of the inflation unit. The fabrics must pass flame tests and rip tests and the jacket has to meet various other technical requirements while being sufficiently attractive for children to want to wear it.

We also encountered the problem that, while some other bodies wanted to be in the project, they soon withdrew when they realised what would be involved in the detailed testing and the health and safety issues that would become necessary. As a company we take this as part and parcel of the challenges encountered in the innovation process.

At the end of the day we are seeking to design a light-weight product that will have the following features:

1. A light-weight breathable fabric to give comfort to a child and appeal as an attractive garment in its own right.
2. High visibility patches to help prevent road accidents, while not being unduly intrusive.
3. An automatic life jacket that will activate within three seconds of water immersion, but will not activate inadvertently in rain or high humidity.
4. A life jacket that will self right an unconscious child onto their back within three seconds of water immersion, and preferably be capable of operating in a five foot swell of sea waves.
5. A jacket that will be hard wearing and tough to give good value for money to parents.
6. A low priced item to enable the jacket to be purchased by a majority of parents rather than a privileged few.

We have produced a working prototype that can meet these criteria and are now seeking to improve on the design before submitting the garment for the extensive certification. While the product has been much harder than first anticipated, the unfortunate news items of children drowning are a constant reminder and incentive to ensure that the project is successfully completed.

As a company we receive a considerable number of reports of our products saving adults' lives, and we trust that within a reasonable period of time we may be able to add children to those reports.