International Women in Engineering Day (INWED19) is an international awareness campaign designed to raise the profile of women in engineering and focuses attention on the amazing career opportunities available to women in this exciting industry.
This year as well as celebrating its sixth year, INWED is also celebrating 100 years of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) and to help support the initiative the Federation of Piling Specialists (FPS) is celebrating some of the outstanding women that have chosen the foundations and geotechnical sectors for their engineering careers. It is hoped that the brief overview of their job roles and experience may help inspire more women to consider engineering, or even piling, as great career choice full of excitement, opportunity and reward.
With an extremely diverse and interesting carer history is Yvonne Ainsworth. Yvonne is presently General Manager at JRL Civil Engineering. Her current role sees her developing strategic plans by evaluating operational and financial opportunities, establishing budgets, winning work as well as leading a technical, operational and commercial department. Yvonne is also in charge of allocating resources including recruitment, building company image by collaborating with customers and employees, whilst enforcing ethical business practices and maintaining quality service by establishing and enforcing organization standards. Yvonne is also passionate about continuous improvement- not just for herself – but also seeking opportunities for everyone she works with.
Hannah Davies is Project Engineer with Cementation Skanska. Currently on Cementation’s graduate development scheme, Hannah can be involved in all aspects of piling and ground engineering projects, from work winning and design through to managing construction on site. Currently on placement with the in-house design team she is busy putting together geotechnical designs for tenders and projects that Cementation has secured. Hannah takes initial site investigation data to assess the ground conditions and uses this, along with other project information such as structural loadings, drawings and known site constraints, to create an engineered solution. She also liaises with the estimating and operational teams, to ensure the solutions are practical, innovative and sustainable in order to meet the client’s needs in the best possible way.
Laylee Eftekhar is Project Engineer at Bauer Technologies and is responsible for all aspects of work related to the quality assurance and quality control of projects. Laylee ensures all materials are inspected and conform to the specified requirements and prepares submissions of all quality records. Laylee worked on the Battersea Power Station Project in London.
Frances McWilliams is a Graduate Design Engineer at Van Elle. Frances graduated June 2016, with an HNC in Built Environment from New College Lanarkshire. Working for Van Elle as a Graduate Design Engineer for 18 months, she is predominantly responsible for design of ground beam packages. She is also responsible for bespoke designs for piling and ground beams carried out in-house and for liaison with clients and site teams at preconstruction and operations stages to ensure smooth development and installation of the scheme designed.
Georgia De Sanctis is a Senior Geotechnical Engineer at Remedy Geotechnics, who she joined in January 2019. She worked previously for a large engineering consultancy and has chartered with the ICE, as well as having experience designing shallow and deep foundations, retaining walls and slope assessments. Georgia has also completed various site engineer roles, as well as working abroad in Italy for a year. Georgia is looking forward to expanding her design and management experience further with Remedy Geotechnics.
Laura Williams is HSEQ Advisor at Keller, where she works on major building sites around the country, including on projects such as the A14, the Redrow Project in Luton and on the London Tideway sewer system project. Laura’s job involves conducting safety checks, providing advice and protecting the wellbeing of workers involved in ground improvement piling, speciality grouting, heavy foundations, earth retention and post-tensions systems.
Sabrina Mohamed-Irfan is a Civil Engineering Degree Apprentice at Keller and is studying towards a BEng Civil and Infrastructure Engineering at Warwick University. This is a 5-year programme during which time she will attend the University, as well as gaining on the job training at Keller. Sabrina is currently undertaking estimating duties for the ground improvement department, having arrived at Keller in late October 2018. Her tasks include preparing stone column layouts, compiling pre/post regrading levels and obtaining aggregate quotes to input into tender quotations, plus working on devising basic vibro designs, risk assessments and quotations for small, straightforward schemes. Sabrina has also been out to various sites to view vibro operations and has accompanied colleagues on trial pit inspection site visits.
Rhian Swan-McCay is a Trainee Engineer at Keller Phi Group. Rhian joined Keller a few years ago as an apprentice, where she started out creating CAD drawings, before getting involved in designing retaining walls and estimating and managing jobs on site with the support of her line manager. She is now working towards her BSc Civil Engineering degree at Leeds Beckett University. This is a 5-year programme during which time she will attend the University, as well as gaining further on the job training at Keller. Rhian is involved in all stages of a project – from initial enquiry to design to watching it being built on site. She’s also engaged in the commercial aspects of a project, where she can review contracts.
Sarah Collerton is Contracts Manager at FPS member Keller, working in the Ground Improvement Division. Her principle role is to manage key projects for Keller, which includes ensuring that the key projects perform in line with budgets and targets, on-going development of effective Quality, Environment, Safety and Health systems and maintaining excellent customer service through the generation of long-lasting relationships with Clients to encourage profitable repeat business.
Nicola Elizabeth Carr is a Senior Design/Estimating Engineer at Roger Bullivant, where she carries out tender designs and pricing within the piling department for a wide range of piling projects in the South East of England. These include residential projects, schools, infrastructure and commercial units. Her role also includes construction issue design and costings for secured projects, providing ongoing technical support to the company’s operational teams and liaising with Customers and their Engineers to meet their requirements for design. Nicola also is involved in research and development for the Company, and considers the provision of technical solutions, value engineering and health and safety key in every part of her role from initial enquiry to delivering a suitable solution for the customer.
The FPS would like to thank all those who participated in the INWED 2019 initiative!