Profile

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Andy Woods

Curriculum Vitae

  • Current Job:

    Senior Systems Engineer

  • Employer:

     

     

  • About Me

    I’m a husband, a friend, a runner and an engineer

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    At the minute I’m busy training for and running half marathons, I spend weekends relaxing with friends and cooking with my wife. I try to go away to places in the UK regularly and sometimes go camping and surfing.

    I like to eat Thai Food or Indian Curries which I enjoy cooking at home, I also make pizza too. My wife’s vegetarian so I get to cook some interesting vegetables which I had never seen before I started living with her!

    I’m refurbishing my house so I sometimes spend weekends painting, decorating and fixing things.

    I’ve learned skills from work which help me to fix my car or change the electrics at home and even fix the WiFi when it goes wrong.

     

     

  • My Work

    I’m a Railway Engineer for Siemens in the UK, I work in Systems Engineering which is about making sure that we build the correct thing.

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    I write specifications which explain how the equipment should work,  I help people write down what they want the equipment to do, I build computer  models of the railway to experiment and see what changes our equipment would make and how that affects passengers.

    I really enjoy my job because I get to help make the country a little bit better, I have got to travel to places like Spain and Germany. I get to see the benefits of what I do when people are able to get around easier. I help to reduce the Carbon Dioxide emissions which helps to reduce the impact of global warming.

     

  • My Typical Day: I talk to people to help to solve their problems.

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    My alarm goes off at 06:30. I have a quick breakfast and leave the house about 07:30. I drive to Work in Chippenham from my house in Bristol. This takes about an hour and I’m in the office by 08:30.

    I make a cup of coffee, turn on my laptop and check my e-mails. I then look at what I did yesterday and see what I can do. Sometimes if there are urgent e-mails asking me for information I have to go and talk to people to find out the answers if they are the expert. Sometimes they send me to someone else so this can take a long time.

    I have lunch at about 12:00 when I go for a walk with my friend Paul and we get a sandwich from the local shop. I eat this while I read the news or catch up on Facebook on the computer.

    After lunch I do some more people chasing or writing documents to sort things out. I finish at about 5pm and  drive home. I get home about 6pm. Most days I go for a run with my wife and then we cook dinner. We watch TV for an hour before we got to bed about 10:00.

  • My career path: I entered via a direct entry job following my degree. I then transferred onto the graduate traning scheme. After a five Years I left my employer and moved to another comapny which was smaller and I gained more experience. I then moved back to Siemens in a more senior role.

  • My Interview

    • How would you describe yourself in 3 words?

      Smart, hardworking and fun

      What's the best thing you've done in your career?

      Helping to bring automatic trains to the Victoria Line in London or bringing an automatic routing system to Derby.

      What did you want to be after you left school?

      I used to want to be a pilot but I couldn’t so I ended up being an engineer.

      Were you ever in trouble at school?

      A couple of times…..

      If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?

      I think now I would probably be an economist.

      What has surprised you most about a career in Engineering?

      I spend most of my day talking to people, I earn as much money as my doctor friends, I get to fix interesting problems.

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