Good salaries, a strong skills demand, a huge range of career options, a variety of routes into those jobs, as well as excellent opportunities for career development and professional recognition.
In a previous blog post we’ve written about the advantages offered by engineering careers, but what do the engineers think? We asked a few young engineers what their favourite part of their job is…
Pete Winslow, a structural engineer at Expedition Engineering, worked on the Olympic Park Velodrome:
“When the project is coming towards the end and you can see the thing you’ve spent so long designing rising out of the ground, there’s a sense of satisfaction that you’ve achieved it. You can look at the Velodrome, for example, and say ‘I helped with that’ and it’s really satisfying.
“The whole team went to the opening event at the beginning of last year to see Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and the rest of the team cycling round the track and it was an amazing feeling to see how all that work had resulted in this fantastic building.”
Angela Malynn is a building services engineer at Arup, helping design ventilation, lighting and other systems that make buildings comfortable places to live and work:
“Engineering is a bit of a bug and you get hooked – you get dragged into problems and you want to find the answer. Once you finish and deliver something, the achievement is wonderful.”
Aoibheann Hurley, a project engineer at Nestlé, helps design, assemble and improve chocolate production lines:
“It’s not quite ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ but it’s really rewarding to put so much work into a product, go down to your local shop and see that product on the shelf that people love to eat.”
Ian Rawlings is Senior Testing and Commissioning Manager working on underground trains at Transport for London (TfL):
“London Underground is 150 years old and allows about 4 million people to get on with their daily lives. Engineers are involved in every part of making the railway system work and we have to make improvements without closing the railway down or disrupting passenger service and there’s a huge amount of satisfaction in that. I love seeing people using the new parts of the railway – keeping London moving.”
As Third Party Infrastructure Manager at Thames Tideway Tunnel, Sue Hitchcock is helping construct a sewer tunnel upgrade to reduce pollution in London’s River Thames:
“My favourite part of my job is working with lots of people, taking a problem and providing a solution. It’s not always straightforward and can sometimes take quite a long time but it’s always very satisfying when a solution is achieved.”
James Spurr is a sports engineer at the International Tennis Federation, testing tennis equipment to make sure it meets professional standards and regulations:
“It’s given me some great opportunities. We’re not just based in the lab here in London. I’ve been to countries all over the world to events like the David Cup and the Fed Cup and worked with people involved in tennis at all levels, including groundskeepers, coaches, players and other sports engineers. It’s such an interesting job that I’ve never had that Sunday night feeling – that dread of going into work on Monday. I haven’t met anybody in this industry who has that.”
You can meet many more engineers and find out their favourite part of their job at The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair. The Fair – the UK’s largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths – returns to the NEC, Birmingham, from 13 – 16 March 2014. You can now sign up for your free places here.
