“At Engineering Matters we strive to ensure diversity and equality in our podcasts all year round. This means making sure that the work of women in engineering is reflected in our episodes. We challenge ourselves, and the companies that we work with, to seek out female voices, a task that is not always easy in an industry where women make up only 12% of the workforce. At Engineering Matters we believe in the power of storytelling and we know that people who speak out about their work, and have their contribution recognised, become role models for future generations. As American children’s rights activist Marian Wright Edelman so articulately stated “you can’t be what you can’t see’” and in recognition of this we take very seriously our responsibility to actively seek out women who are working on engineering projects or technology that is changing the world for the better.

“In recognition of International Women in Engineering Day 2020 we are looking at the work of some of the amazing women that we have featured during the past 12 months who are developing solutions to the world’s biggest challenges. Not all were engineers, but all were contributing to engineering in some way from designing satellites that can make structures safer and creating new forms of renewable energy; to ensuring that we have water in crisis situations and creating the next generation of hybrid electric aeroplanes. So here are some of the stories from women doing engineering that really matters……”

– Bernadette Ballantyne MEng AMICE, Producer and Co-Founder of Engineering Matters

Satellite Breakthroughs

At the end of April, as COVID-19 had us all in its malevolent grip, we spoke with the UK’s Satellite Applications Catapult about technology that could save structures here on earth. Chief Operating Officer, and space engineer, Lucy Edge is running 45 different satellite related technology projects from the organisation’s campus in Harwell. She explained how satellite enabled communications have changed dramatically, becoming increasingly vital over the past decade and especially during the pandemic enforced lockdown.

At the same time the technology has got smaller and smaller, dramatically bringing costs down, a journey of miniaturisation that today sees satellites the size of a loaf of bread orbiting the earth. “So we haven’t just been on a journey of technology development and miniaturisation and cost reduction…… We’ve also been on that journey of sort of helping ourselves to be comfortable with this way of working. There’s so much power in spacecraft technology because it’s completely borderless, it goes everywhere around the world depending on which orbit you’re in. So there’s so much to be gained from it, but we do have to have that confidence in it in order to be able to really use it properly,” says Lucy.

Secure Water Supplies

This journey of technical development was something that water industry operations specialist Judy Anderson also shared with us. After 16 years of working in operations at Yorkshire Water, and now Global Head of Water at consultant Mott MacDonald, Judy was well placed to explain how disaster resilient our infrastructure really is at a time when reassurance was needed. Water companies were well prepared to keep services running despite the potential labour force disruption of COVID 19. The drive for efficiency post privatisation with tight regulation and lessons from both water shortages and flood events has seen water companies invest in automation and the latest technologies to keep water flowing, maintain resilient supplies and ensure wastewater is collected.

But for these automated systems to work, systems need power. “There is a real link between power and water. You hear about the energy-water nexus because you know, the more water that we need, the more power that we need and if the power supplies is not available, then that clearly has an impact on our ability to treat water. But that is something that companies plan for,” says Judy. “Power resilience is something that companies look at as part of their long-term planning processes. The critical supplies for instance, for water will typically also have generators, which will mean that if the power is out that they’re able to at least run the most important parts of the plant to continue to supply water.”

In the future Judy says that new technologies are helping water companies explore a greater range of scenarios and understand the impact of systems on other systems in real time – for example weather systems on the existing water network. All of this adds up to greater resilience.

Powering the Future

Ensuring resilient power supplies is the very reason that Lorna Bennet became a mechanical engineer. Growing up in a tiny village in rural Scotland, regular power cuts would leave Lorna Bennet and her family without electricity for days on end. Determined to become self-sufficient Lorna set about learning how to create sustainable energy, from designing water wheels to working on tidal power arrays and testing the world’s largest offshore wind turbine blades. Lorna now spends her time working on renewable energy projects at the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, designing and testing innovations that could change the world.

Achieving Net Zero

Getting the UK to a place where our overall carbon emissions are zero is going to be a very difficult journey that engineers are already working on. Back in November 2019, Engineering Matters headed over to the Carbon Crunch even hosted by Mott MacDonald in London to find out more about the challenge ahead. Here, the fantastic Jenny Hill, Head of Buildings, Industry and Bioenergy at the Committee on Climate Change, which inspired government to set the net zero target, explained what the challenge is for engineers and infrastructure.

Transport too is a crucial part of the UK’s journey to net zero with decarbonisation being a critical part of the path. This year we interviewed one of the most enthusiastic transport professionals that we’ve ever met as research for a podcast on how to make construction more productive and in this context we met Lizi Stewart, Managing Director for Transport at consultant Atkins who began her career studying law, but found her calling working on the UK’s transport networks.

Meaningful work, as Lizi described, is perhaps the best description we’ve heard for the professionals who are coming together to solve the problems facing society. We hope that hearing the experiences of these intelligent, dynamic women working in engineering industries will inspire more females to see themselves following similar career paths because the opportunities are varied and plentiful.

For the IET’s Young Female Engineer of the Year, Ying Wan Loh, who we interviewed in December, it is particularly important that there are more women leaders in engineering businesses. Having worked at Rolls Royce on a range of projects from hybrid electric planes to international supply chain logistics, Ying says it is an exciting world to be part of and women should aim him.

This is particularly important, says Ying, because women and girls need more role models.

“If you have a woman leader in the business, it will feel very different. And I hope to see more of that. And I hope to be part of that.”