Quote #9: The Secret Of...

This week the quotes in my diary focus on starting. Something. Anything. A big project or a small activity. And the quote above is one that really appeals to me. The project that I've been working on at work started out as this seemingly massive thing where the amount of work we had to do and the time it was going to take us seemed like a stretch. But here we are, 9 months after starting development work and we're putting the finishing touches on the software and getting ready for the software to be used in a production environment (ie with real-life people and real-life situations).

I think this is one of the benefits of the way that engineers are taught to think. We break a big, complex, impossible-sounding problem down into smaller manageable steps. This approach to problem solving allows us to achieve the seemingly impossible. 

If you can break an impossible task down into a bunch of completely possible pieces and you complete all the possible pieces successfully then, surely your impossible task just became possible by virtue of completing all the smaller possible pieces... Try this approach next time you have to solve a problem and see if it helps!

What Do I Do? Project and Software Job

This time one year ago, I was still coming to terms with living a life where I didn't freak out every time my phone rang, worked normal hours and no longer worked in a factory. I had just moved back to Cape Town and almost 2 years of long distance for Frosty and I had just come to an end. 

I was just into my second month of my first job that my dad asked me what I did for my new company and at that stage I didn't really know, so I wrote a post on what I did at my factory job. Since I've just completed my first year with my current company, I thought that now would be the ideal time to share what my current job entails.

I am now a project engineer (well, that's what I call myself) and part of a project team with a few other members, which means that I get to deal with clients and develop software for them that will suit their particular operations requirements. In order to give you a vague idea of the industry I'm involved in, we develop software, mainly for factory environments, that replaces paper based record keeping with computer-based record keeping. The software helps to facilitate shift handovers, allows users to generate reports for those handovers and reports for other relevant operations information relevant to everyone from CEO level down to plant operator level.

On a day-to-day basis you will find me involved in some or all of the following:

• Keeping track of our project plan and status and other project management activities.
• In meetings (most of them calls) talking to our clients trying to understand their requirements for a certain piece of work.
• Configuring our "base" software to fit in with needs specific to our clients.
• Designing reports as specified by our clients.
• On Google, trying to figure out SQL queries*, python** syntax or some other thing related to coding that I still have to learn about.
• Sending e-mails responding to queries,  following up on requested information and generally "adminny" stuff.
• Organising monthly staff socials (the fun part of my job).
• Deploying bug or client fixes to client servers in order to make sure that their software is running smoothly.
• Putting together test plans, to make sure that our software works as specified.
• Every now and then, I also have the opportunity to travel, such as when I went to Italy for work (you can read about it here and here, and for the more "travel-like" posts on italy here, here and here).

I have to say that I really am enjoying my current job a lot more than my old job. I miss working with code that let me see a physical change in the factory (i.e. making a small change to a line of code could stop a tank from overfilling and overflowing). But getting to work normal hours, have weekends and be close to Frosty mean that I'm much happier overall, so it has definitely been a worthwhile change! Plus, I still get to be involved with factories without having to worry about the day-to-day issues that are involved with running a factory!

* SQL is a programming language that allows you to get a lot of information out of a database quickly

** python is a programming language, and the main language that my company uses.

Engineering In Style: Katherine

Today I'm really excited to share Katherine's story with you and give you a bit of an insight into what a Civil Engineer does. Take a squiz below!

Katherine from Engineering In Style

Hello All!  My name is Katherine and I am half of Engineering In Style.  I am a Civil Engineer currently working in the Iron and Steel industry.  When most people hear engineering, they think of design engineers that spend a majority of their time at a desk.  I work in project management, focusing primarily on construction management.  What does this mean?  It means my day can vary drastically depending on the status of my projects, but I never spend a day running calculations.  When a large improvement or new facility is built in my company, my department hires the engineers to design it, critiques the design, sets the project budget, hires the contractors, and manages the construction and startup.  Some days I spend out in the field talking to ironworkers and boilermakers, other days I’m in the office reviewing drawings, sending emails, and making phone calls.  What I love about my job, is I have to go from knowing absolutely nothing about a facility, to being enough of an expert to manage the people designing and building it.  It really is fun, and I love a challenge!

On Engineering In Style, I write mostly about what I do outside of work.  A lot of what I do during the day is information I can’t share with the general public, not to mention I have more than enough hobbies to write about!  To follow my shopping addiction, DIY attempts, cooking adventures, and random musings (and to see Cath’s guest posts), check out www.engineering-in-style.com, follow us on twitter @engineerinstyle and Instagram @engineeringinstyle!

Guest Post: Engineering In Style

To borrow a term from one of my favourite bloggers:

"You Guys!"

I am really excited about today's guest post - it's the first guest post on Practical Cookie that is written by other bloggers, so I hope you enjoy it! This is an intro to their blog and I will be posting other guest posts by them in the coming weeks - so don't forget to come back to find out more about the two lovely ladies at Engineering In Style. And if you pop across to their blog in the next 24 hours, you should find a familiar face there!

Hi Everyone! 

We are Katherine and Samhita. We blog over at Engineering In Style! We both live in the beautiful city of Chicago and work as Engineers by day.  We decided to start a blog a year ago (celebrated our first birthday earlier this week!) because we wanted to change the way people viewed engineers. We love our jobs (most of the time), but we also have a pretty incredible life outside of work.  We felt that blogging would be the best platform to spread our message and reach the most number of people.  Through blogging we have met people from all around the world (such as Cath!) and have had a chance to interact with other women engineers who share similar stories and experiences as us. In the next few weeks we’ll be sharing with you what we each do at work, what we love and hate about our jobs, and why we absolutely love living in Chicago. Feel free to reach out to us via twitter @EngineerInStyle. Look forward to hearing from you!

Samhita & Katherine

Sumhita and Katherine

Engineering Guest Posts

Since I've started blogging, I haven't found many people who fit into the same niche as me (female engineers who blog). This is partly because I haven't known where to look. And so, the other day, when I plugged in "Engineering" as a search term to Bloglovin, I was really excited to find a few blogs written by female engineers. Yipee!

One of these blogs, Engineering In Style, features an engineer every month. When I saw this, I was really excited. They're based in the USA, so when I saw that some of their tags included "South Africa" I was even more excited. I thought, I don't have anything to lose, let's see if they would like to feature a South African engineer as a guest poster - and they're keen!

In the next few weeks, I'm going to be posting some guest posts from Sumhita and Katherine on Practical Cookie and at the same time, they'll be posting some stuff that I've written for their readers over at Engineering In Style. I'm really looking forward to sharing what they have to say and getting another session of guest posts on to Practical Cookie (as well as being as guest poster on another blog!). Go and check out their blog and keep an eye out for my (first ever) guest posts. And if you forget to look, don't worry, I'll remind you! 

Conference Call Reality

Part of my job involves conference calls. And when I say conference calls I don't mean a half hour catch up with my boss who is working from home. I mean 2-4 hour long discussions with people on multiple continents discussing 
requirements and brainstorming useful functionality for clients. 

If you take part in conference calls as a normal part of your working life, I'm sure you'll appreciate this as much as my whole office did when we were shown this clip a few weeks ago!

And, just for fun, another clip on what happens when you're trying to specify something using concepts that people don't fully understand...
The caption reads "Funny business meeting illustrating how hard it is for an engineer to fit into the corporate world!" which is pretty accurate as well.

Oh, The People You'll Meet

I sat in the same row as another engineer on my flights between Joburg and Paris, on my way to and from Italy. And I was reminded that people will always surprise you.

On my way there, I had the most wonderful, interesting conversation with a guy from Zimbabwe, who had studied all over the world and now works in the USA, making aeroplane engines for the A380 aeroplanes (among others). It was wonderful talking to him and we chatted about engineering and the jobs we had been involved in. We chatted about family. We talked about travelling. We discussed Zim and how his views on Zim (as an expat Zimbo). We talked about South Africa. We talked about people, in overseas universities, studying "Africa", without knowing what it's like to actually live here. About our skills shortage in engineers. 

He spoke respectfully and thoughtfully, without giving me the impression that he was trying to be cool or gain one-upmanship. Even when he talked about something that you would perceive to be negative, he did it positively. He engaged both myself and the other guy in our row (who was off to Italy to do training for forklift driving), in conversation and was genuinely interested in what we both had to say. Lastly, he addressed our Air-France hosts and hostesses in their native language! All without show. I have to say, that barely knowing this guy, he has gained my utmost respect.

Sunrise at Charles de Gaulle Airport on the way to Italy

On my way back, another engineer sat in my row. After the normal, "Hey, howzit going...blah blah" some of the next words out of his mouth were, "Wow, I'm so excited to be going home. This place is filthy and gross. I couldn't speak the language, no one could understand me and I can't wait to get out of here."
Wow, strong sentiments to express to someone who you've only just met and a country that you haven't had time to explore. Although, to be fair, he had been staying in a red-light district and didn't get the note that in France, corporate engineers suit up to go to work and don't really do the whole jeans-and-collared-shirt thing. 

We talked a bit more and I found out he's working for a company that builds trains and he did his thesis in microprocessors and sensors for microprocessing. Interesting job and thesis topic, but after one or two more questions from my side, I gave up making conversation. This guy seemed to be only interested in blowing his own horn or complaining about things. And, to be frank, he was annoying me and all I wanted to do was read my book and then try to get some sleep.  

So, two different flights. Two different chats with fellow engineers who were like chalk and cheese. So much for those boxes and labels that we all automatically put people into when we first meet them (and don't lie to yourself, even if you have an open mind, you make a judgement on people before you even talk to them). 

And I was reminded that people will always surprise you.

Can We Afford to Not Design For People?

At the beginning of this year, Frosty and I were approached by one of our friends, asking if we would be interested in getting involved in starting up a Western Cape Chapter of Engineers Without Borders South Africa (EWB-SA). This is something that I'm so SO excited about and I will definitely keep you informed on how things go with getting things off the ground.

As one of our first major team-buildings we are going through a 7 (ish) week course that is all about Human Centred Design (HCD). This is a free course that is offered by +Acumen, which is a branch of a non-profit organisation who aim to tackle the issues of poverty in a way that is most beneficial to the people who are being helped.

The first session got off to a great start. It definitely opened up our eyes to how difficult it can sometimes be to obtain a solution to a seemingly simple problem that will be used by the people you're designing the solution for. I think one of the biggest thoughts that it triggered in me is:

In our communities, businesses and own lives, how can we
ensure that our objective "people oriented" design?

It's a question aimed to spark discussion and thinking. I don't know the answer. What do you think?

I've only had a chance to breeze through the rest of this course, but let me tell you, I think it's going to be amazing! Looking at design from a more "human" perspective is something that has always fascinated me.

As engineers* we are so often told that we were taught to think. But thinking only gets you so far. Often, designs are brilliant, but don't get adopted by the people they were meant for because of some small factors that have a huge impact. I'm really hoping that this course will help me both personally and professionally. By the end of it, I hope my design thinking has been broadened and I will be able to come up with designs that make people happy.

*We have two guys with non-engineering BSc degrees as part of our team and interestingly, they ARE taught to design things with people in mind a lot more than engineers are. I find it incredible that this is the first time we've had these types of discussions with them, seeing that I've know these guys since 2nd year! I can't wait to see what else we'll be learning with this!

What Do I Do? Factory Job

My dad asked me a question recently. 

"Chick, what is it, exactly, that you do?". 

This was in reference to my new job, which I'm still settling in to and figuring out, so I couldn't give him a proper answer right then and there. But it did get me thinking about what I did in my previous job...

When I was in varsity, my folks asked me a similar question:

"Chick, your degree is a very good degree, but once you're

finished studying, what, exactly, will you be able to do with it?"

There is pretty much no straight answer to these questions. As students we were told by our unforgettable Maths lecturer that as engineers, we are taught to think and solve problems.* I think that sums up pretty well, what engineers do. But it's also incredibly broad and still leaves you with no idea of what I would do on a daily basis. 

So, in a nutshell, here are some of the things I did in my previous job:

• Learnt something new most every day
• Helped to look after and maintain the software that controlled our factory operations
• Debugged code (and either fixed it myself or got others to fix it for me) when it was causing issues in factory operations, for example when:
• Valves stayed open/closed and tanks overfilled/didn't fill up - incorrect mass set points in the code
• A software sequence was stuck on a step - it was waiting for another sequence to end so it could use the same device
• Helped process engineers to optimise code by testing and monitoring proposed sequence changes with them and noting if it was physically possible or not
• Co-ordinated weekly maintenance planning meetings and followed up on planned maintenance activities carried out by the artisans
• Tracked breakdowns that occurred in the plant and put together action plans to improve the ICE (instrumentation, control and electrical) issues
• Attended project meetings
• Got called out a lot, in the middle of the night, when my team were battling to solve a software related issue or troubleshoot on the code (definitely the worst part of the job!)
• Worked on stabilising our control systems by facilitating the upgrading of our servers, sorting out licences and ensuring future projects took the control systems into account
• Helped to co-ordinate a supply chain graduate induction program in my second year (not exactly engineering, but such fun!)
• Maintained and kept track of any software change requests that needed to be sent to our 3rd party software guys
• Helped to commission some projects

This device is one of many that I had to learn to troubleshoot
on at the factory

The key is learning how to interpret the
error messages (and knowing when it's
time to replace the entire unit!)

It was a pretty stressful job, but I learnt so much from it and got to work with the most incredible team. This is just one of many types of jobs that engineers end up in. My current job will be very different from this and once I get my teeth into some proper work, I'll update you on what else an engineer does!

So, now, I hope that you have a better understanding on possible jobs that an engineer can be involved in. 

And, if you're an engineer, what does your day-to-day job involve?

*He also told us that the only three things you need to remember in life are:

1. Your wife's name. 

2. Your wife's phone number. 

3. Where you left your car keys.

And the rest of the things can be worked out if you think about them carefully enough. 

(This is difficult if you're a straight female...but I think it illustrated his point quite well:) ) 

Recipe for Awesome (Tiny) Chicken House

This last weekend, I went back to KZN for Frosty's birthday on the farm. We had an awesome dinner and get together with some of his family and friends and he got some awesome presents. But I think the present that will keep him busiest was a chicken called Cheesecake, so named by the lovely gift-giver, Shells. According to one of the guys with us, it's a Black Australorp chicken and Frosty is hoping that it turns out to be a girl so he can have eggs for breakfast every morning, maybe he'll even get a few more so he can invite friends over for breakfast!

Anyway, even though this little chick came in the most beautifully decorated gift box, we decided it needed a bit more room to grow and jump around and thus we decided to build an

Awesome (Tiny) Chicken House

Ingredients

1 x baby chicken (or a few more if you like)

1 x plastic box (with a lid)

1 x brick with hole in the middle for water

1 x plank of wood, similar in size to your brick

1 x small flower pot

1 x piece of large paper (newspaper works)

a few handfuls of paper cuttings, sawdust, wood shavings or grass

2 x small glass bowls

1 x pen

some water and baby chicked food (we used future life)

Tools

1 x jig saw

1 x hole saw (attaches to your drill)

1 x sander (with sandpaper, you could just use sandpaper as well, it just takes longer)

1 x boyfriend who is willing to show you how to use power tools :)

Method

1. Wash your box, box lid, flower pot, little glass bowls and brick (just a rinse to clean off any dirt that may have accumulated while they were sitting in the garden, gathering dust). Leave them to dry.
2. Put the wood plank over the brick and mark out where you'll be cutting it.
3. Take the jig-saw and cut where you marked out.
   
   
   
4. Take the hole saw and drill away two holes - make sure that your 2 glass bowls will fit into the holes you've drilled! (You can use the cores to make cool Christmas decorations!)
   
   
   
5. Use the sander to sand away all the splinters on your feed holder.
6. Put everything into the box as illustrated below and voila - your new Awesome (Tiny) Chicken House!

I've decided that I quite enjoy using power tools (even though I'm an engineer, most of the power tool stuff is done by my artisans) and so if anyone has any suggestions for other cool projects involving power tools, send them through!

* We weren't using any safety gear here - ideally you should wear goggles and ensure all your pieces you're working with are secured with clamps to minimise risk of injury!

Goldiblox Toys

A friend forwarded me an awesome advert for Goldiblox - engineering toys for girls! I'm all for encouraging more ladies to enter the more technical professions, and I absolutely LOVE this concept!

Started by Debbie Sterling, a mechanical engineer by trade, these toys and books encourage young girls to explore engineering concepts with toys that are slightly more attractive than the leftover Lego blocks from my boy cousins that I used to play with as a kid.

Hopefully we'll see these hitting the shelves in South Africa at some time!

Post-Its and Papered Walls

I completed a 3 day planning workshop for a major, complex project we're about to launch at our factory. Wow. By the time we had finished, the pristine white sheets of paper that we had stuck over the walls and windows of our room had become littered with coloured post-it notes and kokie lines. I now view post it notes, markers and white sheets of paper stuck on walls in a whole new light.

I know a lot of people (especially a few of my girl friends) love to use post-its to place in their diaries, on their fridges and as quick thank you notes to friends. I've come to see this as a conventional use of post-its. 

This week, myself and the guys (yes, all the rest of the team were guys) spent time classifying and writing big tasks on post-its, then breaking up the big tasks into smaller tasks and writing them on post-its. Then breaking those tasks into smaller tasks on post-its. Each post-it had the task, name of person responsible, company, estimated duration and set of 3 or 4 filter "tags" written on it.

Hard at work writing post it notes

Then all the post-its were ordered according to logical sequences and processes and a temporary pencil line was added in to show the link between tasks. Each post it and all the accompanying information was then captured on to the computer as part of a database. During capturing, each note was given a corresponding number (according to the database number on the computer) and a red dot, to indicate it had been captured on the computer. Notes with a blue dot were used to indicate a delivery of something. Then processes were linked, and during this time, a blue line was drawn indicating links between the different tasks. By the end of our 3 day period, we had something looking like the below image and an ultra complicated project breakdown.

Discussing process and logic sequences

Part of our final project plan according to post-its

I've never been part of a big project planning session and this was an extremely enlightening exposure to an amazing project planning technique and tool. For the new people (like myself), our facilitator's aim was to ensure that we understood the project planning process so that going forward, we can facilitate other project planning sessions. I'm sure that I will be able to use this tool going forward, as it's applicable to all projects, not only engineering ones. However, this is only the beginning and our facilitator will have regular check-in sessions with us to track our progress and I'm sure there's still a lot to learn from him about the project planning process.

Learnings Of A Generation Y New Employee

We live in an age of instant gratification. I recently read a post about why generation Y yuppies are unhappy and it gave me some food for thought. Before reading the rest of my post, you can check out the generation Y post here.

Metaphor for what I thought my job would look like
before I started working...

When the post talked about generation Y kids starting out in their careers and expecting them to be great from day 1, I instantly related to this. I've been working for just over a year and a half and it's only in the past few months that I've really begun to feel a sense of making a difference in my job. My parents, grandparents and other older relatives and family friends all told me that it was going to take time and that no matter what job I start out with, it's likely to be crap. So, even though I logically knew that my first 6 months to a year were going to be tough, it was still frustrating to me when they were even tougher than expected. 

...Metaphor for what my job actually looked like
a few weeks after I started

I also got given some really amazing advice from the older people in my life that I took to heart. Using this advice helped me to make the most of a bad situation, here are some of the things I've been told about or learnt along the way that pertain to my experience as a new employee:

1. Be humble. When you go into a job as a newbie, expect to know nothing. Instead of acting like you know it all (and even if you think you know how to do something or how something works) rather ask. No one like a know it all. But when the "know-it-all" knows nothing about the company it's even worse (and you end up looking really stupid, instead of intelligent).
2. Give it 6 months before you decide on whether you like the job or not. It takes a while to learn the ropes and how a company operates. Add to this trying to learn how to be useful to your company - the only way to settle into your new job is to give it time.
3. Be willing to learn. Ask questions. Don't assume that just because someone is a cleaner, tea-lady, receptionist that you can't learn from them. I've learnt the most interesting things from some extremely surprising sources. Our engineering finance lady knows more about machine inspections and care than I did when I first arrived - and she doesn't have a technical degree, just years of factory experience.
4. Find the gap and fill it. When I arrived our control systems were buggy and no one was really looking after them. I've now become the "go to girl" for control systems in our factory. No one asked me to do it. I saw the gap and took it. The fact that I have my own set of "go to guys" (who have years more experience than I do) is irrelevant. What's important is that I'm driving change with control systems where before there was none and that is what makes me valuable to my team.
5. Observe the good and bad managers. Knowing how to interact with people is extremely important. So is knowing how to handle and motivate a team. Taking note of how managers interact with people and deal with their teams is an important part of growing in business. There are techniques that you will learn from the good managers and there are techniques you'll learn to avoid from the bad managers.
6. Chat to the people in your company who have been there for years. The quiet, white haired grandfather figure who keeps to himself and gets on with the job is only too happy to help out, no matter what problem you face. The talkative co-ordinator who is always reminiscing about how things used to be done in "the old days" has held a variety of positions within the same factory and understands the subtle people interactions you need in order to keep things running smoothly. And the blunt, no bull artisan who kaks guys out when they're not pulling their weight has a heart of gold and knows exactly how to coax another day's work out of something that should have broken down a month ago.

I've applied all of these things to my job and even though it hasn't been rainbows and unicorns, I can appreciate that there's a lot in life that needs a long term approach and building a career is one of them.

Since I'm a generation Y kid, I'll always get a kick out of instant gratification. However for the big things in life, I'm trying to look past instant gratification (no weekly clothes shopping trips for me) and rather invest in building a life, career and name for myself that will reap rewards years down the line. Starting now. And maybe, if I'm lucky, my current investments will start to reap rewards sooner than expected and I'll get not instant gratification, but delayed, prolonged gratification.

Technical Writing

While perusing Facebook one night, I saw that one of my friends had posted an interesting article by Kyle Wiens in the Harvard Business Review. In a nutshell it explores the idea that businesses produce technical manuals that are often riddled with unnecessary jargon and big words. A lot of the time technical manuals contain instructions that the man on the street cannot make sense of. When things don't make sense, more often than not, the job will be performed incorrectly. And that contradicts the idea of having a manual in the first place.

In the artical, Wiens mentions an online book that his company have developed - the Tech Writing Handbook - which is a free guide to writing technical manuals. I've scanned through the site and it offers practical advice on writing manuals that can be understood by everyone.

This site really appeals to me because I like to write and I'm involved in a technical field. A lot of my engineering friends and colleagues have terrible writing skills, down to not knowing how to spell "palletising" (spelt as "pallertising") or "carton" (spelt as "cartoon" by a lot of our artisans). This doesn't bother most engineers, because they usually communicate in graphs and sketches but it bothers me. A lot. However, that's beside the point.

The point is that we don't have many of these manuals in our plant. Recently I've started writing a few troubleshooting guides for my artisans to use so that they don't call my specialists in the middle of the night because a cable has come loose or because an air pipe to a valve is leaking or because a hand valve is closed and the tank isn't filling up. I got called out the other night to help fix a screen. At 12 o'clock. After spending an hour on the phone with my guy (he's new, so he still needs a bit of support) I got to the factory, tried a few things and after about 10 minutes we discovered that the network cable had been unplugged come loose. No one knows how.

On Monday, I'm going to write a technical guide on troubleshooting for screens. I'll use advice from the Tech Writing Handbook to make sure that my guys can understand what I'm saying. Hopefully next time, I won't need to be called out in the middle of the night for a loose cable! And once we have enough of these guides maybe, just maybe, my team will stop getting called for issues that are not ours to fix.

I think the lesson here is that, when writing technically, you need to ensure that your message can be understood by everyone. This will be my aim so that next time an issue crops up, anyone can take a look at the relevant troubleshooting guide and fix the problem, whether they're from my team, finance or a visitor with no working knowledge of our factory.

Cape Town SAGirlEng Event

Last Saturday my colleague and I had the privilege of going to speak in Cape Town for the Western Cape SAGirlEng event that was held at UCT.

SAGirlEng is a branch of the SAWomEng initiative which was started by Mabohlale Addae and Naadiya Moosajee in 2005 with the aim of encouraging more female involvement in the engineering sector. It's an NGO and has a few different branches:

SAWomEng GirlEng - aims to expose high school girls to the idea of engineering as a career through information sessions, workshops and mentorship sessions with university students.

SAWomEng Conference - university students from across the country come together to participate in team driven projects which cover social and engineering problems and require the teams to come up with an engineering solution to these problems. The students are also exposed to different sponsors of WomEng, meet other females who are actively involved in the industry and network with fellow lady engineers.

SAWomEng@Network - allows practicing female engineers to network and acts as a means of guidance for career development as well as encouraging them to carry on pursuing a career in the engineering field.

Click here to find out more about the SAWomEng initiative.

We were asked to give a presentation at the GirlEng workshop event and included information on the different types of engineering and how engineers fit into our company as a lot of girls at high school don't really know the different types of engineering options that they have. We were able to expose them to the different types of engineers that we use in our company and give them a few details on what the different types of jobs involve. There was also a presentation given by a representative from the CBEm(Council for the Built Environment) which was extremely informative. You can read more about them here. After the presentations there were lots of questions from both the high school girls as well as their university level mentors. They ranged in topic, some were technical, some were general, but all of the questions allowed us to uncover a bit more about engineering, the "working world" and what it was all about.

This was my first interaction with SAWomEng and I really think that this organisation has an amazing idea, so much so that I've just completed my registration with them! Encouraging more girls to enter into a technical degree is something that I feel incredible strongly about - I only wish that I had had proper information on what engineering was about while I was at high school. I fell into engineering through chance and "luck" - imagine how many more people would pursue a career in engineering if they were exposed to it at a high school level!

Take a peek at some of the pics below that I took at the event :)

Hat Decorating

More Hat Decorating

In my pink hat after decorating.
I had a lovely time chatting to some of
the young ladies who attended the event.

SAWomEng - thanks for such a great event!
I look forward to the coming events