I'm a second year student Civil Engineer at Cardiff University. I am also lucky enough to be sponsored by a great company called Laing O'Rourke who employ me each summer to work on site providing Civil Engineering supervision and advice to site operatives.
In the summer of 2010 I worked on the Manchester Metrolink in the Stops and Substations department. The Manchester Metrolink project is a big expansion of the current Metrolink in Manchester connecting up places like Rochdale to the central system. I was working to build the stations for this line out to Rochdale. This was my first proper experience of Civil Engineering as a contractor and I quite literally went from knowing nothing about construction sites and being pretty much useless at the start of the summer to leading teams of operatives unsupervised installing big precast lift shafts and other insitu elements by the end of it. I had a great time and gained some great experience.
To explain why I'm at this point training to be a Civil Engineer I'll mention my old job. I worked as a Project Manager and Developer at Innoware who are a great Software Development company creating large online web solutions (Big websites that use Big databases). I started out as a tester and through the grace of being given the opportunities to prove myself, managed to work my way up. Eventually I was actually coding (hence my affinity for websites and computers), managing projects, meeting with clients and doing sales for the company representing them at networking events amongst other activities. Although I had some really great experiences at Innoware and I definitely enjoyed some aspects of the job I had a thirst for something more practical and to get outside! This lead me, under the advisement of my old boss, to look into Civil Engineering and after a few days shadowing at Mott McDonald I had decided it was what I wanted to do. So off I went , found me some sponsorship and a place at University!
That pretty much explains me apart from to say that I am heavily involved (I'm one of the Co-Presidents!) in EWB Cardiff a great engineering charity who work to alleviate the barriers to development caused by technology. They do lots of great things and I am mostly involved in the awareness side of things, going into schools and giving presentations and workshops promoting engineering. These show them how important engineering is in the world and also what good it can do! I've allso had the pleasure of manning stands at large science festivals to get kids involved, getting chance to chat to thousands of them! Check EWB out they are great!
Oh I also enjoy snowboarding, skiing, hiking, kite surfing and cross country running - It's not all work!
p.s I recently created a document for some Uni work with all the Civil Engineering events I have done up till April 2011 and this can be found here. It has little descriptions of each event and what I got from each. Bit of harmless self promotion! All events after this will be on my Blog any ways! (http://goo.gl/IJ3Bu)
