Chartered Civil Engineer –
Rishmila Mendis
If you want to design and create the networks at the heart of a country like roads, bridges, dams and harbours then civil engineering might be for you.
Chartered Civil Engineer – Rishmila Mendis started her work experience on several bridges in London.
I do like bridges I think that they are fascinating structures they are quite individual with characteristics of their own and just fascinating how they are made to work.
I first started working on bridges during my summer vacations from university. So I did a four year course so all three summers I worked with the same company and they were involved with a lot of bridges.
And I was involved in general inspections of their bridges on the Thames so that would incorporate travelling in a boat and going under about five bridges for the general inspection. For principle inspections we actually go into the bridge just to look at the general condition of the bridge and then file a report and send it off to the client
You do get to see the secret life of the bridges in terms of going into the towers, in Tower Bridge you can go inside there, or where they raise the bridge you get to go into the bascule. So it is quite nice you get to see lots of things parts of the bridge that you wouldn’t normally.
The best thing about engineering is just the variety of work. I mean you’ve got bridges, structures, airports, roads. It is so wide and so varied and you can obviously specialise in which ever field you want.
My work experience with Atkins has been quite varied as well. When I first joined one of the first things I looked at was the foundation design of a tower that was to be built in Bangkok. Following that I then did some surveys of Waterloo Station looking at the concourse and arches local to the station.
I then was quite lucky to be seconded out to Dubai for about six weeks working on an aqua park. Basically that was very good, I was checking drawings, dealing with technical queries and designing elements such as masonry walls and staircases.
I actually went during the winter, which is about 34 degrees but it was actually the best time to be there as they have all the events on the Dubai 7, the power boat racing, the horse racing and the cricket. So it really was a fantastic time.
Being female in civil engineering is sort of quite a novel idea, I think that about 10% of engineers are women and there’s no real disadvantages if anything it’s kind of, I think women can offer something different to engineering. I think companies have actually said to the directors of companies you know look into recruit women just to bring diversity to the workplace. I think it’s important.
When a new bridge or building is constructed everyone thinks about the architect. The media likes to talk about architects. But for some reason engineers are quite modest. Even though architects it is perhaps their concept. In terms of bridges it is actually engineering companies and civil engineers that design those bridges so I think that we maybe need to bring that more to the forefront and people appreciate that. Civil engineers do some clever design to make things look good, stand and work.