Cathy Sinclair

"I manage a team of engineers so I guess that the \"manager\" personality type fits pretty well! I do love the coaching and mentoring that is part of my managerial role, and seeing engineers learn new skills and move into other areas of the company is very rewarding. I've learned to be very organised, as I have a lot to get through and must effectively prioritise my team Managing a team of people means that you inherently need to be an \"influencer\" to be successful. I need to be there for my team, help them through problems and make sure that they understand both the details and the reasons behind what they are doing as part of their role. I definitely see myself as a \"quality controller\" as I do feel that things should be fair and it's important to me that my team are happy. It is also essential that they trust me and I'm honest with them so I work hard at this. "

"I manage a team of engineering consultants who travel around the UK and beyond visiting industrial sites and helping our clients to assess the risks from things like fire, flood, equipment breakdown and cyber security breaches. I'm responsible for making sure that my team get to the right places, offer the right advice in a timely manner and record their assessments and the engineering solutions that they have developed in detailed, accurate reports. Essentially I make sure everyone has enough work and does it well and to the best of their ability. I coach the less experienced members of the team to help them improve their skills and support the more experienced ones when they are looking at complex problems. I am also responsible for ensuring that my team have the skills to move into other areas of the business if they would like to do this. I like the variety of my role. I have 10 engineers who report to me and they are all different and require different levels of interaction and support from me. Some love to work alone and some love to work closely with others, so it's up to me to make sure that they get what they need. My engineers visit a wide variety of different industrial sites making lots of different things so it's interesting for me to accompany them and learn about how things are made. I have to use both my technical brain and my people skills on a regular basis, which also keeps things interesting.The starting salary for a field engineer is around £30,000. As a manager, the starting salary would be around £70,000 depending on the level of experience that you had coming into the role."

"I studied Maths, Physics and Chemistry at A level at school. I enjoyed the sciences and maths and was pretty good at them, but I wasn't sure what to do with them as a career. My dad is an electrical engineer and he encouraged me to consider engineering as an option, as it would lead me straight into a job. I didn't have another plan, so decided to study Mechanical Engineering at university as this is quite a general engineering degree and I thought it would leave my options open. After I completed my 3 year degree, I got a job in a design office with a consulting company who built new oil and gas pipelines and exploration equipment. I rotated around the various departments designing and purchasing equipment for a couple of large projects, but it was all office based and I didn't feel that I was using my soft skills. Then I did a 3 week stint on a construction site in Denmark as part of construction of a new gas plant that I'd helped design, and I really enjoyed that. It was working on site, solving problems, talking to the client and other contractors and being much more hands on. I then realised that I was in the wrong job and looked for something which would let me do more of this on a regular basis. Shortly afterwards I joined FM Global as a field engineer and I was in that role for 15 years before moving into a managerial role. Field engineering is a fantastic job, as I worked from home (which made it easier for me to have my two kids - I went part time for a while too) and you are visiting such a wide variety of different places, meeting lots of diverse people and really making a difference by giving clients good advice which will help make their businesses more resilient. One of the things that influenced me moving into a managerial role was that I took an overseas posting for 3 years as a field engineer down to South Africa. My responsibilities during this time were to look after the local South African clients but also to recruit, mentor and train up two local engineers who could then support the clients in the region. I had done a little mentoring before in the UK, but the recruitment and training element was full on down in South Africa, and I really enjoyed it. My manager realised from this that I had the skills needed to manage people at a higher level, so put me forward for the next managerial opening that came up! "

"I like to be out in the fresh air, but I also love cooking, baking and doing jigsaws. I'm a big fan of medical dramas on Netflix and Prime; I watched all 16 seasons of Greys Anatomy over lockdown 2020! I have no idea why I like medical dramas so much, as I really don't like hospitals...I also really enjoy travelling, and my favourite holiday would be two weeks in South Africa where I would split my time between going on safari to see the Big Five, sitting on a sandy beach and exploring the mountains. I have two older children; my son is 21 and studying Robotics and my daughter is 17 and is looking to study Bio-engineering. My husband is an aeronautical engineer and does complicated things with modelling stresses and strains in aircraft and Formula One cars for his job. "

"Probably 4 out of 5 days a week I'm in the office, either the physical office or during 2020/2021 my home office. I will spend probably at least half of each day on either short or longer calls with my team, checking in on how they are doing, answering any technical queries that they may have, discussing their plans for work for the next couple of months or perhaps reviewing their performance or development goals. Once a week I get the whole team together remotely for a social call for an hour or so and every 4 weeks we have a longer technical team call where I encourage each of the team to present a short session on something they've learned, something they are working on, or perhaps a general technical issue that everyone would benefit from learning about. I do spend a fair amount of time triaging emails either from my team or other managers or roles in the business. Sometimes these require action and sometimes they are just for information. I also field instant messages from my team and others through the day, perhaps for quick queries. I probably spend 1 hour a day reviewing my engineer's reports that they have produced to make sure that they are technically accurate and of good quality. My final hour is probably spent planning either my calendar or my activities around what needs to be done.On average 1 day out of 5 I'm normally out on site accompanying one of my engineers on a visit to a client site. I will observe what they do, help as needed, provide coaching if needed, whilst also learning about what the client needs such that I can better support my engineer going forward."

"I have A levels in Maths, Physics and Chemistry (all Grade A) and a 1st class BEng in Mechanical Engineering from Southampton University. I am also a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with the IMechE."