Alex Mather

"My personality types are Influencer, Quality Controller and Trainer.Influencer means I like to work both on my own and in a team. My job lets me do both of these! Team-work is really important in my role as a lot of different groups of people come together to complete the project.Quality Controller means I like to keep people safe. My job requires me to keep people safe through my designs, all the way through to thinking about the people who will construct my design; ensuring they are kept safe whilst building this.Trainer means I am good at explaining difficult information in a simple way. This is important in my job as I speak to lots of different people throughout the life-cycle of a project - not all of these people have backgrounds in engineering, meaning I have to explain my designs and choices in a way they can understand."

"The main purpose of my role is to design and maintain different things such as bridges, highways, and structures that are needed in our society to help people go about their day-to-day lives. Whilst doing this, we have to consider different things such as cost, tight deadlines, health and safety, disruption and sustainability and the environment. We have to make sure we give the client exactly what they asked for. We make structures stand up whilst also making them look good!"

"I was inspired to go into Civil Engineering after going to a career day and learning about what Civil Engineers do. The subject is very broad - there are lots of different things you can go into - such as building design, bridge design, construction management or flood defence to name a few. Civil Engineering lets you build some of the tallest buildings - such as the burj khalifa, or help people - providing clean water in developing countries.I enjoyed maths and science in School. My job involves maths and science, whilst letting me solve problems and think of creative designs! I followed the subjects I enjoyed doing in school and it has led me to a job I enjoy."

"In addition to my role I am also a part of 2 committees - \"National Association of Women in Construction\" (NAWIC) local committee and the Women's Engineering Society (WES) local committee.As part of NAWIC, I go to committee meetings with around 15 others, where we talk about upcoming events and plan for these - different events include socials where we can meet other people with similar jobs to ourselves. We also guide younger girls and help them with things such as applying for jobs in the industry. Every first Thursday of the month we have a social event and it is nice to meet new, like-minded people. Our favourite event of the year is the NAWIC Charity Ball!As a part of WES, I manage the Instagram account for the North East (find us at @westyneandtees). This is a group for all different types of Engineering. I help to promote lots of events in the area such as lectures."

"One of the projects I have worked on has been a scheme intended to make roads safer whilst maintaining them, as they had become run down and had patches and potholes. Road markings had also become worn away. On a typical day working on this project, I could be out visiting the roads and making notes about where the road markings need to be re-painted or the road surface fixed. These visits were done with the client engineer from the council, who is paying for the project. I could be completing drawings using computer software to allow to construction workers to understand exactly what is needed and where it is needed. I could be re-designing road signs to give road users more warning about upcoming hazards, making the road safer and hoping to reduce the number of accidents that happen on the road. I could also be budgeting the project or in a team meeting with my manager discussing the progress of the project; and identifying how we will get the work done by the deadline.I worked on this project for 4 months whilst I was on the highways team. I have recently moved to the bridges team, meaning all projects I work on in the future will be different. No 2 projects are ever the same!"

"A-Level MathsA-Level Further MathsA-Level PhysicsMEng Civil Engineering with Project Management"