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Asked by deny134raw on 17 Jul 2021.
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Louise Wood answered on 23 Jun 2021:
Biggest problem I faced was my lack of formal higher education in engineering. When I was your age, I never actually wanted to follow in my dads footsteps, I had my heart set on becoming a teacher. All my education is related to becoming a teacher, child care and all that sort of thing. I didn’t become an engineer until I was aged 20. It was only because my dad was poorly at the time that I helped him out on my days off from my job. Eventually I left my job and started working for my dad.
You need to be knowledgeable to gain respect of your client. It gives you confidence to talk to your client about the solution you are proposing. They in turn need to be able to trust your abilities. The common way in my industry is by having a degree in engineering and other letters after your name. Lets be honest a degree does look good after your name.
Degrees in engineering are too generalised, too broad a subject when our company is very specialised. I decided against an engineering degree. I got round this by becoming an autodidact (word of the day). An autodidact is a person who teaches themselves and that is exactly what I did. I read every book I could get my hands on relating to Industrial ventilation. Then I read them again only this time I would work to crack the maths. Sometimes I’d read one book, not understand it at all but then I’d read another book a couple of months later and have a light bulb moment and suddenly it all made sense. Although I didn’t understand too much early on, I stuck with it and that perseverance paid off. I have the respect of my clients and others working in my industry.
I was already member of several institutes. I then approached my main institute, the Society of Operational Engineers (SOE), I did some articles for their Plant Engineers magazine. I used this opportunity to talk to them about what I did and asked if they thought id be eligible to apply for Incorporated Engineer. They said yes. I had to take the mature candidate route. This meant I had to type a 70 page technical report demonstrating a project and visit London for an Interview. I was awarded IEng immediately. This means that I now have some letters after my name. It looks more professional.
The hard work has been totally worth it. I’m respected by my clients as well as in my industry. That’s what I wanted, that’s what I worked for and got.
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Murat Islam answered on 23 Jun 2021: last edited 23 Jun 2021 8:18 am
Very good question! I started my engineering career as a draughtsman, making 2D technical drawings and 3D models using software.. Becuase I didn’t have any experience and I had to start somewhere, and this was the easiest route to what I wanted to do in the future; research and development (R&D) of high quality products. I decided to do a masters degree in Mechanical Engineering Design to get qualified to be a Design Engineer first, and I became just that. To do R&D, I needed more experience in project management, but I was never given any responsibilities to gain the relevant experience. So I decided to shadow other project managers (watch what they do day to day, and ask them questions). I decided to do further study as well and attained my postgraduate certificate (PgCert) in Project Management. This allowed me to have sufficient competencies to become a Chartered Engineer (CEng) through the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, which is also very desirable for R&D roles. Thanks to my past experience and chartership, I was able to secure a R&D job at a very good company, and I am continually developing myself to take on bigger projects. It is very important to set big goals and plan how you will get there, but also accept that plans always need a backup plan, or a complete change.. Perseverence is the key.
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Helen Randell answered on 23 Jun 2021:
When I was working on construction sites there were new challenges and problems every day but a problem i am really proud of solving was how to build a building that was sunk 6m into the ground while still being able to work around the top of the hole and get all of the deliveries to the bottom of the hole too. That is why i love engineering – its all about problem solving and thinking about lots of different solutions then deciding which one is best and then making it a reality. Its really satisfying to see all your hard work become a reality. In terms of problems in my career I have come across some people who didn’t always trust a young female engineer but becoming a Chartered Engineer really helped with my confidence in dealing with any slightly awkward moments!
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Tommy Shinton answered on 23 Jun 2021:
My work as a Civil Engineer is all about solving problems – so that’s what I do every day!
One problem I had to solve was with a pumped pipe under a river – it was in a big shaft that is 20m deep! So we tried to design something that could be accessed and fixed without people having to go into it – because it’s a lot safer if you can do something without entering what’s called a ‘confined space’. We managed to come up with a design that meant you could open a hatch at the ground level and lower a pump down inside the pipe if it needed to be cleaned.
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Chloe James answered on 23 Jun 2021:
A problem I faced in my career would have been when I was studying my A Levels. I didn’t do as well in my A Levels as I hoped, and that made me question whether I would actually be able to become an engineer. It’s really hard, especially when all your friends have done well and are celebrating. I had to work hard over the summer, to develop my skills and knowledge in maths and physics, and managed to get into a university local to me. This meant I had to work twice as hard to achieve my goals. I think the main thing that I learnt here, was that sometimes things don’t go to plan, and you have to think of alternate ways to achieve your goal.
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Carys Kelly answered on 24 Jun 2021:
Hi there! This was more of a personal problem, rather than a problem at work. I went to university to study Mechanical Engineering and I thought that once I was done I’d find a job as a Mechanical Engineer. However, within a few years of doing that I really wasn’t enjoying it, I found it so difficult so it just wasn’t for me. I then had to work out what to do, and I decided to continue my course. I’m so glad I did this as it ended up giving me loads of other options for jobs. From this, I decided to apply to loads of jobs in Technology and I was really lucky to be offered a job at Sky!
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Caroline Roche answered on 26 Jun 2021:
Once when I was on site, I couldn’t get a piece of equipment talking on the network. All the equipment on site needed a distinct address (IP address) allocated to commuicate back to the server but it wouldn’t accept the address.
After stressing for a bit (with the customer standing over my shoulder), we took a break and when I got back, I decided to forget about what I had done previosuly for the other pieces of equipment and start afresh.
I started from the beginning, made sure the equipment was physically setup correctly and all the cables attached. I connected directly to the device to set the new address, after some trial and error, I worked out the sequence the device needed to be setup in the set a new address. Making lots of notes for the maintenance teams incase it lost it’s address again.
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