Alice Thomas

"My Manager personality is great and helps me to be friendly and work with others. In my job this is important and helps get a good solution. I am logical and enjoy solving problems. This is incredibly useful for engineering, as it allows me to thing though a solution. Often information is required to make decisions on design. This data can be historical flow data or found elsewhere. My Developer nature helps me think laterally to get the information desired in a usable format."

"I form part of a design team which designs and modifies clean water treatment works. This includes treating water from bore holes or reservoirs and making the water fit for human consumption. I calculate flow rates, chemical dose rates and efficiency. The solution must be affordable and safe to operate. I like seeing siphon pipe work I designed being installed and working on site. I feel confident I will be achieving chartered status in the next year or so. There is generally a shortage in process engineers who wish to work in the water industry, which means there is room for me to develop and progress. I visit sites and clean water treatment works regularly. Some of them are very nice as they are positioned next to lovely reservoirs. I am attending a conference about water treatment in Birmingham soon. Given the water industry in the UK is bound by location, I don't have much need to travel outside the region, but there is plenty opportunity. In this type of work, if you are willing to change companies, you can move wherever you want to live, as everywhere needs water and sanitation."

"My Mum has always worked and been a powerful female role model. My geography teacher at school inspired my path towards water treatment, but it was my science teacher at college who made me believe I could study engineering. I studied Chemical Engineering at university. I then went onto the graduate scheme before moving across to my current position. I chose the water industry because I wanted to arm myself with the skill to design clean water treatments. I think this is an incredibly valuable skill for my contribution to the world. It is important to me to feel good about the work I do, in this industry I feel satisfied that I am doing worthwhile things."

"I love travelling and seeing new parts of the world. I enjoy new experiences, most recently I tried indoor skydiving, but my big adventure this year was trekking up to Annapurna base camp in the Himalayas. I also love musical theatre, board games, cooking, yoga and spending time with my friends. "

"I am usually at my desk, or in a few design review meetings and the occasional site visit. I may be looking though historical data to understand how a site works or doing calculations to make a future site more efficient and reliable. I spend most of my time in Excel looking at tables and graphs to understand and advise the rest of my team on the design of the treatment works. I enjoy the satisfaction of solving problems. My whole job purpose is to do this. "

"Post-graduate degree (MSc, MA, etc.) Chemical Engineering"