Journey to Success

If you want something done, do it yourself. And that is what engineers Jumana Al-Zubaidi and Lee Franck have done to establish more mentoring for young infrastructure people. Their second Journey to Success mentoring event takes place on Wednesday chaired by Infrastructure Intelligence editor Antony Oliver.

Jackie Whitelaw
08 February 2014

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This week’s event takes place on Wednesday at the George on the Strand pub in London and features mentors Caroline Tong, an experienced bridge engineer with CH2MHill, Flint & Neill structures specialist Ian Firth, Arup sustainable buildings specialist Hayley Gryc and Sebastian Macmillan of Cambridge University’s design for the built environment masters programme.

Journey to Success is a career-focused event aimed at young engineers, architects and engineering students, explain Mott MacDonald structural engineer Jumana Al-Zubaidi and Arup structural engineer Lee Franck. “Lee and I felt that there was a shortage of mentoring available to young people in our industry,” Jumana says.

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“As ambitious young engineers, we were thirsty for some advice and guidance on which were the right career decisions to make to learn lessons from those who have more experience than ourselves.

“For this purpose we created Journey to Success, an even that aims to answer all those career questions that young people who wish to excel in their professions have.”

This week’s event takes place on Wednesday at the George on the Strand pub in London and features mentors Caroline Tong, an experienced bridge engineer with CH2MHill, Flint & Neill structures specialist Ian Firth, Arup sustainable buildings specialist Hayley Gryc and Sebastian Macmillan of Cambridge University’s design for the built environment masters programme.

“This is our second event under the Journey to Success flag,” says Lee. “We have been lucky to pull together an amazing panel of people from various parts of the industry, at different stages of their careers and who have chosen different branches within the profession. By making the panel as varied as possible, we hope to address the different interests of the audience, but also to provide many perspectives on the same issues.”

“The vibe of the event is very laid back. We know it can be intimidating to ask questions to those more senior than us, and we wanted to make sure the delegates were as comfortable as possible,” Jumana says.

The audience will be made up of younger delegates, but also more experienced engineers, architects and academics.

“We have booked the top room of a pub, the £6 ticket includes a free drink and we have a private bar for the whole evening, so this is as much a networking and social event as it is one useful to your career. We look forward to welcoming any young people who want to have a successful career and have a few questions about how to get there!”

More information from: http://iabse.org.uk/events/

http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/journey-to-success-tickets-10060237441

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About Jumana Al-Zubaidi

Jumana is a structural engineer working for Mott MacDonald on the design, assessment and inspection of concrete and steel bridges as well as several asset reviews for national bridge stock. Jumana is also undertaking a part-time PhD in bridge aerodynamics at Imperial College London looking at methods of mitigating oscillation phenomena in long-span bridge structures. She is an active member of the IABSE British Group’s Executive committee in which she is responsible, alongside Lee, for the young members events, activities and membership experience. Jumana believes strongly in reinforcing structural engineers identity both within the industry and within society through strong links between architects, engineers and academics.  To this end she has organised many events and talks which aim to inspire, educate and provide a common platform for young professionals and students to communicate with each other.  

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About Lee Franck

Lee is a chartered structural engineer working for Arup in London. She has been privileged to work on a range of prestigious and varied projects including a new gallery for the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Timber Wave sculpture for the London Design Festival and recently a 5km concrete viaduct in Hong Kong. Keen on sharing her passion for design with other young designers and promoting the benefits of her career choice, she is a member of the IABSE British Group’s Executive committee and lectures at UCL and the University of Greenwich. She believes in the role of structural engineers to make a positive impact on people lives and works as a volunteer with the charity Bridges to Prosperity in Rwanda.