School engagement on #INWED17

Teams from Hydrock led sessions with school-children in north London and Gloucestershire on International Women in Engineering Day, 23 June, to inspire interest in engineering as a future career.

At Raynham Primary School in Edmonton, north London, our remediation specialists ran a science and health and safety session with approximately 60 students from Year 6. Our session was led by Christine Mardle, Ian Burton, Karen Storey and Nigel Tapp as part of our community benefits programme with Enfield Council. This programme supports our work on site at Willoughby Lane, the first phase of preparation for the £6bn Meridian Water development.

Christine and Ian explained to the school-children how soil and groundwater can become contaminated, and through a series of simple practical exercises they helped the children understand how different types of pollution can be cleaned up. Karen demonstrated how to measure noise pollution that can arise on a development site, and Nigel helped the children understand how we de-risk a construction site and how to dress safely and appropriately on site. The session concluded with our team talking about what had inspired each of them to follow the career paths they have chosen.

Running concurrently at Hydrock’s head office site at Almondsbury, Hannah Jane and Eleanor Wratten from our Building Performance Engineering (BPE) team led a session for 16 female students from Year 7 at The Castle School in Thornbury, South Gloucestershire.

Hannah and Eleanor talked to the students about key factors influencing the design of buildings, including, acoustics, light, sources of energy, heating, and air quality. Split into groups, the school-children set about designing a sustainable school of the future and presented their ideas to the whole group.

Speaking about the event, Sarah MacIsaac, Business Development Coordinator for Premium Partners at The Castle School said: “A massive thank you to all of you for such a fantastic morning with Hydrock. The girls were so engaged and inspired by the session and listening to Eleanor and Hannah; you pitched it just right and all the activities you planned were so interesting for them.”

Both events were part of Hydrock’s outreach on Friday 23 June, International Women in Engineering Day, and are part of our programme to encourage the uptake of STEM subjects at school by girls, and boys, and to inspire school-children about the variety of choice from a career in engineering.