• Question: Why did you choose environmental engineering?

    Asked by The BrightSpark to Ashwanth, Jeni, Mark, Natalie, Stephen on 10 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Stephen Richardson

      Stephen Richardson answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      Wow, you’ve asked a lot of questions! This is a great one.
      It was partly by accident – I hadn’t actually heard of environmental engineering! I studied mechanical engineering.
      But also because the whole idea of sustainability really got under my skin at uni.
      I got really inspired by the thought that technology could help us do live in ways that don’t trash the planet.

    • Photo: Mark Gowan

      Mark Gowan answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      I am not an environmental engineer, but all engineers should take into account the environment in everything that we do. I have designed and constructed flood alleviation projects, which try to defend property and people whilst not having a negative effect on somewhere else.
      Engineering is a balancing act with many different solutions to a single problem.

    • Photo: Natalie Wride

      Natalie Wride answered on 11 Jun 2016:

      Hi BrightSpark!

      When I was younger I watched a TV program called ‘Megastructures’ and it really inspired me. I loved seeing these huge projects and all the complex problems that had to be solved to make a super tall skyscraper stand up or a really long bridge stretch over a river. Based on programs like this and really enjoying maths at school I picked Civil Engineering. It was only when I got to University that I became interested in the ground and how important it is to make sure everything works – things like making your school stand up, making our road not (too!) bumpy and making sure we get water to our homes. (If you look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa you can see what happens when it doesn’t go to plan!!)

      Even though I’m not what people would really call an Environmental Engineer, when any Engineering project is designed and built the environment plays a huge part in this making sure what we build doesn’t impact what’s there already. This includes plants and wildlife and impacts on people (like pollution and road closures during construction) but it’s also important to look at what we’re building with (like concrete and steel). Like Mark said, Engineering projects are a balancing act 🙂

    • Photo: Jeni Spragg

      Jeni Spragg answered on 12 Jun 2016:

      Hi Brightspark 🙂

      I am a chemical engineer, meaning I can work in a load of different industries where things are produced (food and drink, medicines, oil and gas, and lots more). But I have chosen to focus on sustainable energy because I care about climate change.

      When I was your age, we talked about climate change in science lessons as if it was some remote thing that would happen far in the future. However in the last few years I’ve realised it is happening already, and it is going to the world’s poorest people who are worst affected. That doesn’t seem fair to me! I didn’t want to stand back and do nothing, so decided I would try to use my engineering skills to play my tiny part in making it better 🙂

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