Daniel Shorter
Age: 29
Company: BP
Role: Drilling Engineer
Since growing up in Southampton, Daniel Shorter has become a rising star at the other end of the country in the oil and gas industry. The drilling engineer has gone from knowing nothing about the North Sea and the offshore industry to working for oil and gas giant BP and now being heavily involved in the well design of one of the most complex deepwater subsea projects in the world.
The multibillion dollar offshore project called PSVM is the company’s most expensive enterprise this year. It is based off Angola, and will see oil being produced there towards the end of this year.
When he started work on PSVM three years ago, Shorter was responsible for the high-level design of all the wells. But since then he has also become focused on the detailed design of each individual well and closely involved in generating operating procedures for the drilling activities. This is to ensure that the wells can be safely executed.
He says: “A lot of the design work I do myself, but also a lot is very specialised and contracted to other companies. A lot of the time I am doing a project management kind of role, making sure that contractors are working in the correct way.”
Big projects like PSVM use a lot of high-tech equipment. So a major challenge for Shorter is to make sure that all equipment is fit for purpose, and made to the right specifications. After drilling equipment has been manufactured, Shorter even supervises testing procedures to make sure it works properly.
Drilling has now started on the project and Shorter splits his time between providing engineering support on the rig, which includes supervising rig contractors, and designing more wells in the office.
“Helping out from an engineer’s point of view, I am the one engineer on the rig,” he says. “In the office I am troubleshooting any problems they have on the rig. It’s a sequence of operations and operational procedures to ensure that the design can get safely executed without any problems on the rig.”
Shorter loves his job and isn’t so concerned with stacking up his living room mantelpiece with awards. Instead, he is now applying for chartered status through the IMechE and hopes to achieve this in the next year. At 29, Shorter clearly has more responsibility than most people his age working in the oil and gas industry. He now hopes to stay with BP and get more operational experience with the company by continuing to work on rigs for the next few years. He then aims to move into a more senior role within the business.
He says: “I believe to design a well in the most effective way you have to have very good knowledge of the actual process of putting a well together. I think in order to progress with my engineering expertise I have to spend a bit of more time on the operation side and after that become a senior engineer or gain engineering authority in some aspect of the oil and gas industry.”
Gavin Lunney
Age: 26
Company: GKN Aerospace
Role: Composites Engineer
Gavin Lunney has only been at GKN for six months but he has already made a good impression there and is a clear rising star in the world of composites. Building on his previous experience of aerospace structures, Lunney is now heavily involved in a major research project, which will see the demonstration of a high-efficiency fuel-saving wing.
The project, called the Clean Sky Joint Technology Initiative, sees GKN Aerospace working with Airbus and a consortium of European aerospace firms to develop a Natural Laminar Flow (NLF) wing. This type of wing has the potential to provide 3-4% fuel savings, making it a key technology to meet critical aviation emission targets.
Lunney has been involved in designing and manufacturing the demonstration pieces for a small-scale version of the wing and coming up with different concepts to prove whether or not it is viable.
He has also been given the role of project co-ordinator for this phase of Clean Sky. He is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day running of the project and holding meetings with members of the team and Airbus engineers. In addition to this, for the project steering group, he must put together progress reports, look after forecasts and budgets and make sure this all fits with the agreed timescales. It’s quite a lot of responsibility for a man of 26.
“I have to try and manage my time and other people’s time to ensure that the team works most efficiently together to achieve the improvement when it is needed,” he says. “I then create progress reports and present to the customer what we have achieved.”
Lunney says that the main challenge on the project has been developing low-cost manufacturing and assembly methods to a step beyond the current level of accuracy required for conventional wings, to achieve the quality of aerodynamic profile required for Natural Laminar Flow. This has involved brainstorming with the team to come up with different concepts.
Lunney is happy working on Clean Sky and looks forward to seeing it become a success when the NLF wing is completed in 2014.
“I am very much enjoying working on this project and gaining the exposure to the industry and the people that are in it,” he says. “To be able to deliver this project successfully will be enough of a reward for anyone.
“I would like to build up expertise within research into composites,” he adds. “Becoming an expert would be what I would aim to do with my career, and use that knowledge and experience to move forward within the aerospace industry.”
Kris Conner
Age: 29
Company: Siemens
Role: Technical Engineer
Since joining Siemens’ graduate programme in 2007, Kris Conner’s talents have taken him to new heights, quite literally. He has become a technical engineer for the company’s fire safety division and is now set to be involved in a fire evacuation system project for high-rise buildings. But a major project that he is currently involved in is helping to design and install a large fire system at a power station in Dagenham, east London.
The project has seen Conner upgrading the current fire system at the power station. The system consists of the latest generation of Siemens’ fire panels, and is one of the company’s largest fire system networks in the UK. It uses 1,200 field devices, including beam, flame and smoke detectors.
As the technical engineer and the technical consultant on the project for the past year, Conner hasbeen responsible for the technical design of the system, as well as the commissioning and integration of the technology. He has also been responsible for managing subcontractors.
He even did the sales pitch for the system at the power station, which won Siemens the contract.
But the project has not been without its challenges. These have included ensuring that the customer was never left in a situation where the power station didn’t have a working system to cover it at the end of each day, as well as making sure that none of the original functionality was lost while the new system was installed.
Conner says: “A power station, with the potential for a fire, can be a potentially dangerous environment. We had to ensure that the system didn’t lose any functionality, while upgrading the system.”
The work Conner has done has been well received at the power station, with the team saying they are delighted with how it has led to a smooth transition period, without disruption. Work to build an extension to the power station is now in the pipeline, which could lead to more work for Conner in the future.
Off the back of his work at Dagenham, Conner has also helped to design a fire system at Killingholme power station, north Lincolnshire, and looks set to work on another, as a result of customer recommendation. In fact, word of Conner’s talents is spreading fast and last year he won Siemens’ championship award for his work on the Dagenham project.
Conner would now like to become a team leader in his division at Siemens and move into chartered engineer status. Meanwhile, he is looking to get involved in a project at Canary Wharf, London, which will look at developing fire systems for high-rise buildings.
Rebecca Lees
Age: 26
Company: Jaguar Land Rover
Role: Materials Engineer
At the tender age of 26, Rebecca Lees has become a central figure in the development of a game-changing new car programme.
The Jaguar Land Rover landmark car, Evoque, goes on sale next summer. It mixes luxury materials with recycled ones and aims to be the cleanest and greenest Range Rover ever.
With the impressive job title of body in white materials engineer attached to her name – of which body in white refers to the car body before it is painted – Lees has been the leader for all of the body in white materials for the vehicle. Among other things, her work has involved developing and evaluating highstrength materials to lighten the car body, improve fuel efficiency, safety and crash structure, as well as making it cheaper to manufacture.
Initially, Lees worked on the project under the guidance of her manager, but then it quickly became apparent that she could do the role on her own.
“This meant I was responsible for sitting down with the body engineers and ensuring that they had selected the right grade and gauge for enabling us to reach very low fuel figures,” she says. “I also looked at new materials that haven’t been used in the past and spent a lot of time with the engineers, making sure that we have got the right combination of materials and trying to get the lowest-cost body in white.”
Lees’ other responsibilities have included leading the materials decisions for other body engineering projects, which has involved the engineering team coming to her to ask what she thinks they should make different sections of the vehicle body from.
Lees is now coming to the end of working on Evoque, but another project called Real Car also shows that the young female engineer is, without a doubt, a rising star in the engineering industry. Real Car, which stands for Recycled Aluminium Car, is a project that aims to increase sheet recycled aluminium in Jaguar Land Rover vehicles from up to 50% to up to 75%. The project started in July 2008 and is due to finish in summer 2011.
As part of Real Car’s four-strong team, she has contributed to winning Jaguar Land Rover’s technical award, which is the most prestigious award the company gives out to recognise product development. She says: “That’s a really big achievement because a lot of the people I spoke to have been working here for 10, 15 and 20 years and have now got their first award. I’ve only been here for two years and have been fortunate to be awarded one.”
Lees’ work is not just impressing her colleagues at Jaguar Land Rover – her talents are also winning acclaim elsewhere. She has won the sought-after IMechE postgraduate masters scholarship award and is now hoping to apply for the young women in engineering award.
Lees aims to become a chartered engineer and to progress in her role as a major Jaguar Land Rover materials engineer in the automotive industry.
“It will be exciting to see what new materials we’ll be able to start using on our vehicles and see where it takes me,” she says.
Arlene McConnell
Age: 29
Company: Selex Galileo
Role: Systems Engineer
Arlene McConnell hasn’t even reached her thirties yet, but has already got a major engineering award under her belt and is now working on what looks set to be the world’s most effective fire control radar.
With her impressive job title at defence firm Selex Galileo – radar and advanced targeting systems engineer – McConnell performs a challenging multidisciplinary role, including mechanical, software and electrical engineering. She is now using her skills to work on the Raven ES-05 radar, which will be installed on Saab’s Gripen Next Generation fighter aircraft.
What makes the radar special is the field of view it creates for the pilot. Fitting a planar array radar in the nose of a fighter jet normally just gives a field of view of about 60-70°, but the Raven ES-05 array is mounted on a rotatable plate, which gives it a field of view that is much larger.
This provides greater situational awareness for the pilot, giving them a better idea of where enemies are located, while being able to respond to threats more effectively.
McConnell has a great deal of responsibility on the project, which includes capturing customer requirements, particularly for the interface definition, ensuring that the interface for the radar system stays up to date with the latest technology. This means that the system is regularly updated with new technology, as and when it is developed.
On the back of this is the major challenge of making sure that the radar system will do what the end user needs, while leaving scope for future development.
“One of the things that I have been brought in to do is to make sure that we are keeping up to date with technology in the way that we use it,” says McConnell. “It’s defining what the customer is looking for and what the system should be capable of doing to make sure we meet the customer’s expectations. “The challenge is making sure that the system does exactly what it should and that we make provisions for future improvement,” she adds. As well as showcasing her talents on such a major engineering project, McConnell is now making herself known across the industry after being named Young Woman of the Year at the 2010 Institution of Engineering and Technology awards. The award seeks to highlight the achievements of young women in engineering, by recognising the very best female engineers under the age of 30 working in the UK today.
She says: “I’m absolutely thrilled to pieces” about winning the award. In addition to her engineering work at Selex Galileo, McConnell also takes part in the company’s university liaison activities as a campus manager for Glasgow University. There she does lecture workshops about engineering to encourage women to go into the industry, something which also helped her to win the award. She now hopes to move up through the technical stream of Selex Galileo and eventually reach top engineering status.
“Hopefully I’ll be a chief engineer one day,” she says.