Happy International Women’s Day!  

International Women’s Day is a campaign dedicated to celebrating women’s achievements, and this year’s theme is Inspire Inclusion. Diversity empowers teams, generates innovations, expands ideas, and enriches environments.  

Working in a male dominated industry, today we are showing our support by sharing inspiring stories from two of our engineers.  

Kelly, our Lead Senior Engineer, first found herself drawn to engineering during high school when she developed an interest in STEM subjects, specifically maths and physics. 

Leaving school after 6th year with an interest in solving real world problems and helping communities, Kelly went on to pursue a degree in civil engineering. Afterwards, she studied for a master's degree in energy and environmental management. Upon completing her master's degree, she then joined Amey as a Graduate Engineer in 2015. 

Kelly specialises in road geometry, with a background in road and junction design. Throughout her career Kelly has been involved in many major projects with Active Travel schemes as her most recent, and with hard work she has had great achievements. Since joining Amey, Kelly has earned her IEng qualification, leading her to win the ICE Tony Chapman award for Best Professional Review.  

Eftychia (Effie), our Technical Director, spent her childhood exposed to engineering. Learning about design and analysis piqued her interest from an early age.  

Living in Greece, she gained her first degree in infrastructure engineering. Working in the engineering industry since 2006, Effie has acquired varied international experience. In 2012, Effie moved to Scotland, where she began her second bachelor's degree in civil engineering. While at the University of Glasgow, Effie developed an interest in Scour, the main cause of bridge collapse worldwide and the main impact of climate change on infrastructure. Effie is now an internationally recognised expert in scour and is currently undertaking PhD research on the topic, leading scour-related projects UK-wide and is developing innovative scour monitoring and prediction tools and methods that help safeguard infrastructure at risk, the travelling public, and the environment. 

In her career Effie has had many achievements. Most recently she received the ICE Scotland Sustainability Champion of the Year award and was named an Engineering Icon by the Royal Academy of Engineering, with her name being placed on Transport for London’s Engineering Icons Tube Map. During her time at Amey, Effie has also been named as one of the Young Women Engineers of the Year, 2021 and one of the Top 50 Women in Engineering, 2020. 

Being a woman in the engineering industry has its challenges at times, however, both women believe working collaboratively with supportive colleagues is essential to overcoming this and excelling in their careers. 

#IWD2024 #InspireInclusion