Engineering news
We can do a lot to inspire the next generation of engineers by working with schools. I have established a relationship with a local secondary school to provide mentoring to sixth-formers studying STEM subjects. The students come into our office to meet with their mentors on a monthly basis, so they get regular exposure to an engineering working environment. The school has a high proportion of students on free meals.
I have also worked with my children’s primary school to build a small pavilion for outdoor learning – the children were involved in the development of the design and reporting on construction.
It was efforts like these that played a part in my winning Building magazine’s Woman of the Year Award last November. The award is designed to recognise the stand-out achievements of women working in construction, in an effort to identify and highlight positive role models who can enhance the sector’s appeal to other women. I was nominated by my colleagues.
It is important for engineers to go into schools to talk about what they do. People outside the profession can have very distorted ideas of what engineering is like, and we can counter this by sharing our experiences. It is important to emphasise the huge variety of roles within engineering, and the positive contribution we can make to society and the environment.
As a woman, I don’t think I have encountered direct discrimination at work but I have certainly been made to feel uncomfortable. In the early years of my career, it was common for construction site huts to have pornographic calendars and pictures on the walls. On my first project, I used to turn the calendar round to face the wall. After a while, the guys turned it around each time I arrived, and it became a running joke, but they never got rid of it.
Young women can find it hard to be taken seriously, especially on building sites; but this can also be a challenge for young men.
I originally studied physics and dipped my toes into teaching. Then I went to work for a small charity in Spain called Sunseed which develops technologies for poor, semi-arid countries. My experience there introduced me to how engineering can contribute to sustainable development, and also to the pleasure of designing and making. This led me, via a masters in renewable energy engineering, to designing low-energy buildings with Max Fordham.
Energy-efficient design
I joined Max Fordham as a graduate building services engineer in 2000. After my first child, I specialised in building performance – evaluating and improving how our completed buildings work. I believe we can only achieve really low-energy buildings by engaging with the people who will use and manage them.
As a senior partner, I contribute to the strategic direction of our business.
A fascinating challenge is the balance between the use of smart controls to achieve better building performance, versus empowering people to control their buildings themselves. This is tricky, as many people are not very motivated by energy efficiency but, if you take the people out of the equation and automate everything, you disempower them further and risk high levels of discomfort and dissatisfaction.
It is ironic that the energy consumption of a building can increase the more ‘low energy’ features it has, as these tend to introduce unmanageable complexity and frequently don’t work as intended.