Dorota and Emily liken their work on the railway to forensics because our Victorian infrastructure keeps our people guessing about how it was first built.
Watch this film to hear what inspired Dorota and Emily to explore engineering and why now is the best time to consider joining them:
鈥淓ven now, I still like to know how things work.鈥� 鈥� Emily Pollard, asset engineer
鈥淚f you can dream it, you can do it.鈥� – Dorota Durazinska, project engineer
Click here to watch Just Like Me, the full film we released for International Women in Engineering Day last year.
Why do you love engineering?
Emily:
It allows you to build things, design things and make them come to life. Just make things – I think that鈥檚 quite empowering.
Dorota:
It allows you to be creative… For me, every day is different. Every day brings a new challenge and every day you learn something new.
What鈥檚 challenging about the railway?
Dorota:
The railway is different because it鈥檚 old and we don鈥檛 always have the drawings, we don鈥檛 have the archived information so you have to work out what鈥檚 going on. How did they build it?
Emily:
I think the word they鈥檇 use is forensic. There鈥檚 a lot of trying to work out why things were done the way they were done and how a structure is behaving.
What inspired you to become an engineer?
Emily:
My maths teacher鈥� I remember thinking, 鈥業鈥檓 in a maths class doing A-level maths鈥� she did civil engineering鈥� What is civil engineering? Someone said to me, 鈥測ou build bridges and tunnels,鈥� and I thought 鈥榦h, and airports and lovely things鈥�. I went, 鈥業 fancy doing that, that sounds all right鈥�. It was that simple.
I had a really, really good teacher, who was really engaging. It starts with the teacher themselves.
Dorota:
There were lots of boys in my school and I quickly made a lot of friends. I spent a lot of time with them. They were talking about engineering stuff and looking at technical drawings and it was just so important and sounded so clever and I wanted to be like them so I wanted to do what they did.
Why did you join 51爆料?
Emily:
I think I accepted a job with 51爆料 not particularly because I was joining the railway but because I was joining a company with a lot of engineering paths I could have taken. 51爆料 enabled me to pick a path and follow it and if I wasn鈥檛 happy with it, quickly switch without having to move companies.
Why is now the best time to be an engineer?
Emily:
It鈥檚 moving so fast and so forward and you think of the new green tech that we鈥檝e got going on at the moment. I think it鈥檚 the perfect time to become an engineer.
Dorota:
Everywhere you look, you see cranes, you see piling rigs, you see barges on the Thames. There鈥檚 construction happening absolutely everywhere and there are the most exciting projects happening right now.
Engineering is such a broad field – there鈥檚 civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering 鈥� that everyone can find something that interests them.
What does your job involve?
Emily:
I look after structures on the Kent route, I just take a huge interest in tunnels. My job is to make sure if it goes over the railway or under the railway, it has to stay there – safely.
[Dorota reviews] the designs of the structure, I review the examinations of those structures so once I get the exam, I can look at it, look at the exam I did the year before that and the year before that. My job is to pick up on trends in defects that hopefully we can intervene before they become an emergency repair that might require us to close the line.
If I find any defects that need repairing, I might request a design, which [means I] would come to [Dorota].
Dorota:
A big part of my job is to keep maintaining existing structures, which are quite old on the railway鈥� Every time we are together, we share our ideas, we learn from one another.
Read more:
International Women in Engineering Day: Just Like Me
Just Like Me: Q and A with pilot Rikke Carmichael
Just Like Me: Q and A with Tara Scott
Just Like Me: Q and A with Helen Warnock
Just Like Me: Q and A with Kamini Edgley
