Lego has a lot to answer for. Well, Lego and a sixth-form engineering education scheme.

“As part of that I did an engineering project to do with heating and ventilation with a real engineer,” says Katy Deacon, the IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year 2006. “I’ ve always been quite technically minded and as a child I was always out with my dad looking at cars or playing with Lego. [After the project] I realised that I enjoyed doing it so I decided to keep going, but I didn’t really know which discipline to go into because there are so many options.”

In the end she went for aeronautical engineering, drawn by its air of glamour and adventure. Although she’d planned to go straight to university, when BA offered her an apprenticeship she took it. But part of the way through she and five fellow apprentices were selected to go to university, which meant that she ended up with her HND, a university degree and practical experience, all while getting paid.

At BA Deacon, 27, specialised in avionics — the electronics systems and equipment used in aircraft — and worked on a wide range of projects. “I really loved the aeronautical site. Working in the hangars was brilliant.” However, after the September 11 attacks in the US and the subsequent down-turn in airlines’ fortunes, she left BA and moved into a more general role at Kirklees council, where she is now an energy engineer at a time when renewable energy is just starting to gain momentum.

Other engineers in the department already had established roles, so she quickly picked up the energy-focused work. The council sponsored her to study an MSc, which included a large renewable-energy component. As part of this she created a renewable-energy toolkit designed to help building engineers and architects to incorporate renewable energy into their designs from the outset.

“A lot of people just don’t know where to start, but it’s at the first stage of the project that you have to create as much opportunity as you can for renewables to work.” For example, whether it is sunny or windy will affect subsequent decisions about wind turbines or solar panels. “Renewables are something that you should install at the end. The first questions are about whether you are using a sustainable design and materials and so forth so that you can reduce energy demand as far as possible before you start looking at renewables.”

At the moment she’s working on a smart metering project that will allow the council to track automatically the water, gas and electricity its buildings are using on a half-hourly basis. “It means that you can spot possible water leaks almost straight away and you can see if someone has left the lights on in a room.” While Deacon has no immediate plans to leave engineering, there is every chance that she will eventually take the project-management skills she’s honing and move into a more general management role, possibly via an MBA.

The business qualification would fill another gap in her life, too — she’s spent most of her career studying as well as working and she’s finding having weekends to herself at the moment rather odd. “I enjoy [studying]. I would like to do a doctorate and I’m hoping to do an MBA soon.”

Female facts

86 per cent of engineers in the UK feel that women are underrepresented in the sector

34 per cent of male engineers describe their workplaces as gender diverse compared with 20 per cent of female engineers

75 per cent of engineers believe that the obstacles for women are in the early stages of their careers and include education

26 per cent of engineers say that the single most important problem facing female engineers is having to work in a male-dominated environment

38 per cent of engineers don’t think it matters that women are underrepresented

Source: Survey of 2,191 engineers by The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science Engineering and Technology and EPCglobal. www.epcglobal.co.uk

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