
Today (23 June) is National Women in Engineering Day and Dr. Liane Smith has issued a comment to encourage women into the profession.
An internationally-renowned engineering, Dr. Smith – Director and founder of Wood Group Intetech – has been working within the oil and gas engineering sector for more than 30 years.
She spent 10 years with Shell after completing a degree at Cambridge and then set up her own company, Wood Group Intetech, which was acquired by the Wood Group in 2013.
Dr. Smith is a Fellow of the Welding Institute (UK) and was honoured with a Fellowship of NACE (USA) in 2009 for her pioneering work in the field of corrosion modelling in the oil industry.
In 2011 she was elected by her peers as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK for her contribution to the international development of well integrity management.
She comments today: “Engineering is not a job for prima-donnas, and that’s what makes it great. It’s about teamwork, and working with great teams has kept me motivated throughout my career.
“Engineering is full of specialist disciplines that very rarely work in isolation. Working with all of these diverse specialisms creates an environment where everyone knows the contribution they are making to a project and they appreciate the value of each other’s’ input.
“As a result, motivation to ensure you support the team effort is high, as is job satisfaction and enjoyment. Team work is, for me, the key defining aspect of the engineering profession; it’s a social job, which requires a lot of interaction with colleagues, and that is its great attraction.”