• Question: Why does your job involve so much travel?

    Asked by laceyc to Joanne, Amit, Emily, Martin, Paige on 13 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by daviesl3.
    • Photo: Joanne Davies

      Joanne Davies answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Hello laceyc.

      My job involves a lot of travel because we have so many offices all over the world. I can choose whether I travel or work from home. I like the travel though because I love to learn about the world, meet new people and see the way things are done in other countries.

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      My job involves some travel… not too much, but we have to travel to conferences to see the science that people in other places and at other Universities are doing. Some engineers have to travel quite a bit because they work for big global companies, or because they have to work with different teams on different projects in many different places!

    • Photo: Martin Wallace

      Martin Wallace answered on 21 Mar 2012:

      As an engineer often you need to talk to suppliers and customers about what they can provide, and what they want to buy from you. Many times this can be done without leaving the office, through email, telephone, or by usign skype to have a meeting over the internet; it’s also possible to share views of your computer desktop to make things a lot clearer with someone who might be a long way away.
      Developments in technology have meant there are now more ways and much quicker ways of communicating with people in different parts of the country or araound the world, but there are some times when a face-to-face meeting is necessary and so requires some travel.
      I haven’t travelled around too much, but I did go to Germany a couple of weeks ago to visit a supplier who wants us to use their products in our new bed. We could have spoken over the phone, but it was far more useful to visit them as it meant we could get to know each other better, and I was able to see and feel the products they were offering in my hands and see them working. This is something we could never have done over the phone and turned out to be a very productive day.
      In order to protect the environment we should be very careful about travelling too much, as every journey releases harmful chemicals into the atmosphere, and we do use all sorts of technology now to communicate with people around the world, but there are sometimes when you just have to travel in order to meet someone.

    • Photo: Amit Pujari

      Amit Pujari answered on 21 Mar 2012:

      My job does not involve lot of regular travel. But as a research engineer, I work on state of the art knowledge. That means, most of the times, I work on project/s (or piece of kit) which has never been done/tried/developed before. So mostly I go to conferences at different places in the world, to present my research. So that the other engineers and scientists know what we are up to.

      I also travel now and then to attend various workshops, training sessions for my professional development.

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