As the Director of the Business Unit Murzilli Consulting, Richard Boden provides strategic consulting to a diverse range of clients, including start-ups, governments and established companies. He focuses on flight operations, technical certifications and company structuring processes, which includes offering strategic guidance on product certification, flight operation requirements, c-class marking projects and overall strategic input.
As the project lead for the UK’s remote ID strategy with our partner Baringa, Richard's responsibilities include project management activities and regulatory expertise. He ensures reliable project execution by coordinating with clients and the internal team. He also acts as a strategic advisor and engagement lead, assisting with strategic aspects, partnerships, certification requirements and project management activities.
Richard Boden's academic journey began in his home city of Berlin, where he studied transportation systems at the Technical University before continuing on to pursue a master's degree in aerospace engineering. During his time in academia, he already had a keen interest in the aviation industry and took on several roles as a part-time working student to gain practical experiences. He began supporting and qualifying the testing for aviation equipment before he moved to aviation-based software for cabin design and flight path optimisation and business jet certification projects.
His academic and practical experiences put him in the perfect position to make an immediate impact. Upon completing his studies, he began supporting organisations with their certification needs, leveraging his experience and knowledge to ensure everything was compliant to industry standards. His first full-time position was at F/LIST as a design engineer.
F/LIST specialises in the development of EASA-approved jet interiors, and Richard's responsibilities there included working directly with the Head of Office of Airworthiness on all activities while simultaneously handling business jet modifications and refurbishment work. Richard ensured that their interior aircraft designs met rigorous safety and performance standards.
In addition to his work as a design engineer, Richard Boden's team was responsible for recertification and approvals of products, a critical aspect for ensuring the compliance with current airworthiness procedures and standards. This responsibility required him to closely monitor design processes and ensure that any changes made were consistent with current standards.
Richard Boden's role also involved the preparation of compliance documentation for re-certification and the required coordination with production, as well as coordinating the necessary tests for modifying or producing aircraft parts. Additionally, he played a critical role in overseeing the installation process and ensuring that they were carried out in accordance with instructions prepared by design engineers.
Upon joining Wingcopter, a young and growing organisation with approximately 20 full-time employees at the time, Richard Boden began as a technical product manager. Given the organisation's small size, Richard took on a range of responsibilities outside his role. In addition to overseeing the technical elements of projects, he also played an integral part in developing operational structures within the business and supporting various teams with these efforts.
Richard was also entrusted with the responsibility of overseeing everything related to certification and ensuring the highest standards of quality assurance were maintained throughout the organisation. His ability to balance these responsibilities was essential in supporting Wingcopter's rapid growth, which has since expanded to over 130 employees today.
Eventually, the responsibilities grew and Wingcopter hired someone to support Richard; afterwards, he was promoted to the position of Head of Certification, where he was responsible for designing organisational structures to keep products designed and manufactured in accordance with current airworthiness standards. In addition to this, he was also tasked with establishing and organising the entire certification team. With these new structures in place, the management team was able to make more informed and strategic decisions based on a precise product roadmap.
Because Wingcopter was still small at the time, he also took on the role of supporting the engineering team and structuring their procedures as well while simultaneously qualifying engineering employees. This involved supporting the operations of the company’s manufacturing procedures as well as flight operations. One of the most interesting projects he was on during that time was the first beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone delivery flight over industrial environments at long distances in Germany.
Following his time at Wingcopter, Richard Boden began to look for new opportunities to develop his skills and expand his experiences. In the process of searching for a replacement Head of Certification, he met our founder and CEO, Lorenzo Murzilli. He was already familiar with Lorenzo after reading through the JARUS documentation, so he felt comfortable handing over his responsibilities before starting his next career challenge. As part of the hiring process for Lorenzo’s team to take over Head of Certification efforts, he had the chance to get a deeper into Murzilli Consulting’s team culture and internal structures.
Following his departure from Wingcopter, Richard’s impression of Lorenzo was so positive that he took the chance to reach out to inquire about potential opportunities at Murzilli Consulting. While we already had a senior airworthiness consultant on the team to address certification needs, the leadership team recognised Richard's exceptional skills and began exploring alternative avenues for him to join the business. Through careful evaluation with Richard, the team identified several key areas where his unique capabilities could be leveraged.
A role was created specifically for Richard’s skillset, which was for operational business development and certification process management. This is how Richard became a Manager for services and operations at Murzilli Consulting. He’s now responsible for ensuring that all internal and some client-based external operational processes are running smoothly, including organisational design and the development of services.
That essentially means Richard is involved in almost all aspects of business operations and functions.
Established in 2020, Murzilli Consulting may appear to be a large agency, but we’re still a relatively young start-up — the difference is that our team consists of experienced professionals who have held leadership positions in major aviation organisations. Still, we follow the pattern typical for most start-ups where team members frequently take on various responsibilities and end up wearing multiple hats.
Richard's background building internal structures for multiple successful drone companies allows him to also provide consulting services to start-ups, corporations and governments and provide them with comprehensive guidance on a variety of topics. In addition to this, he is also involved in strategic consulting, c-class marking, SORA and design verification (DV) and is focused on expanding our portfolio of services.
He said,
“What I like most about working for Murzilli Consulting is being involved in everything required to build a successful business. That includes organising and implementing a functioning company structure with other professionals, and on the other side, supporting the clients who come to Murzilli Consulting for support with their business structures as well.
It’s possible to see all of the different pillars of the drone industry, starting with the manufacturers who need support with getting drones airborne to the operators looking to get authorisations and then supporting governments as they build u-spaces or supporting organisations building and implementing UTM services”
With Richard on the team, it means that our operations are more efficient than they have ever been before, and we’re able to take on a number of new clients while simultaneously broadening our available services.
One of Richard’s current responsibilities is building and expanding our customer success roadmap for Murzilli Consulting that extends beyond single project work and tracking the success of an organisation over time. This involves analysing the various relationships between manufacturers, operators and governments to see how these stakeholders interact with each other long-term as well, which can empower us to give future clients better advice. It also goes along with his ambition of creating a portfolio of services that are currently not being offered by other consulting firms in the industry but are desperately needed.
Richard ended by saying,
“I really enjoy working with the Murzilli Consulting team and seeing them during our regular offsite meetings. It’s just a great feeling to be with each other on a professional level, but also having a feeling of trust that lets us relax while being super productive. We’re able to seriously talk about how we want to work and focus on getting to understand each other and the industry on a deeper level.”
