Profile

I live in West London, with my parents, sister and extended family.

Outside of work, I like to try and keep active by going running, and have recently been training to run a half marathon! I also spend evenings meeting up with friends or even just watching movies or TV shows on Netflix.

I also enjoy exploring new places and I spent my last year of university abroad in Melbourne, and got to travel around Australia and New Zealand!

I am currently a graduate at Atkins, an engineering consultancy, working within the ‘Civil Engineering and Advanced Technology’ team. I work mostly in a office, though the role of a design engineer might also include  visiting construction sites.

The projects that the overall team gets involved with include a variety of buildings and infrastructure, such as residential buildings, airports, water and wastewater systems and nuclear power stations.

So far, my work has mainly related to the design of structures for extreme events, like earthquakes, high temperatures and blasts. Different types of engineers, such as a civil, structural and mechanical work together on these projects.

To make sure that the structures are safe in extreme events, we make detailed computer models of the structure, and simulate the conditions it would experience in an earthquake or blast. We then see how the structure behaves, to make sure the design passes all the checks and won’t fail or collapse.

My work also includes helping to solve problems and queries that arise on the construction site, when the building work is going on. This includes clarifying parts of the design, doing research on materials, or doing calculations of forces on components.

Every day of work can be different as new tasks and problems to solve always come up along the way. My usual routine is to work in the office between around 8:30 and and 5:30pm.

Tasks for an example day might include working on a computer model of a structure, doing calculations, doing some research, or writing up my findings into a report.

This means working in a team with other engineers, so we will usually have at least one short meeting or discussion in a day, to plan work and monitor progress. It is also useful to be able to ask questions, and learn from engineers with more experience and who might be experts in certain technical areas.

I eat lunch with my colleagues, in the office or in the area outside. Sometimes there are ‘Lunch and Learn’ sessions to attend, which might be a presentation to find out about the projects other engineers are working on in the company, or training sessions, for example to learn how to use different programming languages and software.