Profile

I live in Oxfordshire with my husband and cat. We love going out running or for bike rides. I love creating things, whether its baking, crafting, gardening or renovating. I went to Newcastle University to become a Civil and Structural Engineer.

I travel the world designing buildings. Sometimes I design new buildings and other times I help to alter existing buildings so that it can be used differently. For example I recently went to Africa to convert a big manor house into a new British Embassy. This will allow Britain to provide more support to Africa and encourage more British people to holiday there. In my career I have designed a huge range of buildings including; houses, schools, hospitals, prisons, Embassy’s,  Universities, sculptures, places of worship, industrial buildings, airplane hangers, sports centers and swimming pools. Due to working in a wide range of sectors I get the opportunity to meet lots of interesting people and gain an insight into how these buildings are used.

I love that the buildings I create not only provide protection against the wind and rain but also bring together committees and provide people often unique opportunists. The projects also change the way our streets look and will last for many years.

I design how the building stand up usually using maths to help me. In simple terms this may be how thick a wall needs to be to resist the wind or whether we should use timber or concrete for the floors.  This can become complex when we begin to use materials in unusual ways to help create unique spaces and buildings. Often I will use computer software to help me carry out these designs.

I nearly always work as part of a team to create the building including Architects (who determine how the building is used and looks), Mechanical & Electrical Engineers (who design things like the lights and heating), Quantity surveyors (tell us how much the building is going to cost), project managers (helps to make sure we produce our building on time) and builders.

I tend to get to work for 8.30 and leave at about 5pm. Usually my day with be a mixture of working at my desk either using my computer to carry out designs or by hand. I will then often sketch these to share my ideas with other. There are normally several meetings with others who help to design buildings such as architects or with the Client so we can understand how they want their building to look and spaces to be used.

On other days I will visits construction sites to see how our designs are being built and see if there have been any problems. Often I work on projects that are not in the UK so it may mean I fly to another country for the week to be able to see the construction site. I will also use this time to see what materials they can get locally or how they may do things differently.

I led a team of engineers so some of my time is spent deciding what work each person does and how we make money from this work.

My team has a range of knowledge and experience so often I will spend time teaching the newer engineers so they can learn.