International Women in Engineering Day #INWED

Tell us about your role:

Currently I’m working in Work Winning, in pre-construction, where my day-to-day role involves reviewing tender documents, looking at a variety of challenges and providing solutions, defining our ‘win strategy’, planning projects for delivery and supporting the estimating team, working with the submissions team on the tender deliverables, the delivery of bids back to our client to give our client the best solution and value for money and then following this through to post tender and keeping an active line of communication with our clients.

I joined Careys in 2009 and prior to joining the Work Winning team in January 2022, I have worked in the UK and Ireland as a Contracts Manager, Project Manager and Engineer.

What advice would you give to other women considering a career in engineering?

Do it, the construction and engineering industry is very exciting with so many different opportunities and so much variety. Be confident, work hard, ask questions and be passionate and kind.

Tell us about your role:

My role involves providing project planning and scheduling support from pre-construction through to project delivery. I’m mainly involved in the delivery side of things just now which involves developing programme based production rates/output, monitoring and controlling project performance through collation of progress updates against baselines and evaluating the impact of progress and variations on live programmes with the team.

I flag up potential/actual delays (and associated project impact) and support with mitigation approaches through collaborative planning sessions to agree delays impact, extension of time in some instances and eventual baseline programmes. To ensure alignment in project performance, the role requires efficient communication with both internal and external teams.

What advice would you give to other women considering a career in engineering?

I feel planning engineering is a fulfilling role which is key in delivering successful projects with many prospects. You need to be motivated to embrace changes as well as adding value to the projects and to the wider business. So once that desire is there, it’s a matter of keeping focus, developing both hard (tools and techniques) and soft (teamwork, effective communication, etc.) skills while aiming to progress in the role.

Tell us about your role:

Design management can be summed up as a project risk-reduction role deployed throughout the project lifecycle. Design Managers at Careys manage permanent works design and need to be capable of robustly interrogating our consultants and designing subcontractors’ design to ensure it’s compliant with the brief, statutory legislation and good practice guidance, and that it can be constructed safely within the programme allowance in a manner that offers best value, applies innovation and is sustainable.

Careys’ Design Management team work hard to build positive, constructive relationships. In my experience, strong, cohesive alliances are key to the success of any project.

What advice would you give to other women considering a career in engineering?

Look close to home for mentors and inspiring women. They are designing, managing and constructing the industries’ projects here and now, no need to look back in history and reflect. There is a wealth of exceptional women in engineering and construction that I have become aware of throughout the latter years of my career by attending events targeting women in construction.

Put yourself out there, push the limits of your comfort zone, attend the events and join a network designed to connect emerging and established women in the industry. The diversity of speakers will help guide you to your niche in construction, there are many more roles for women than those often in the public eye such as architects and developers.

Tell us about your role:

I assist with all site engineering responsibilities such as setting out, surveying and calculating the quantity of materials to be used on site. I work alongside all other trades to provide information from the architectural drawings so that our skills can be combined to execute the work.

What advice would you give to other women considering a career in engineering?

It’s a very rewarding field to work in. It has its challenges like any other field of work but if you are dedicated and eager to learn you will achieve as much as you want in terms of success and career progression. I’d also say that being a woman in a male dominated industry is definitely more fun than it is scary. If you want a career that requires problem solving, meeting new people and constant learning then I highly recommend engineering.