Highlighting engineering careers with the #WESLottieTour

This year will see the seventh WES Lottie Tour running from 7-11 November to coincide with Tomorrow’s Engineers Week. The annual campaign takes ‘Lottie’ to many different locations accompanying lots of different engineering friends who show Lottie the work they do in engineering and related careers.

Our involvement was initiated by Melanie Zacheis, Senior Geotechnical Engineer, after learning about the campaign from a Women’s Engineering Society newsletter. A whole cohort within the business has since got involved, including Project Engineer Fern Henderson as well as two recent graduate recruits Megan Magrosky and Jane Emerson. They will help take our four ‘Lottie’ dolls across an array of Fugro sites around the UK, sharing their experiences on social media. 

From witnessing geotechnical projects in action, to observing the size and scale of offshore windfarms, inspecting the sub-seabed and performing a range of testing in our laboratory, Lottie will be highlighting the work Fugro’s female engineers do across the full spectrum of the business from company sites in Consett, Aberdeen, Falmouth and Wallingford.

Fern Henderson, Project Engineer said: “I’ve been with Fugro for just over five years, and I help to manage various sites around the UK. In the time I’ve been involved in the business, I’ve seen things steadily improve. There is much more acceptance that yes, there is space for women like me, and we can make a real impact.”

Challenging stereotypes

The term ‘engineer’ is accurate for all kinds of job roles, but for many it still unfortunately remains associated with a very narrow set of stereotypes. In fact, there are a huge range of job roles, environments and responsibilities that engineering as a sector offers, including areas like data gathering, analysis and processing, right through to design and testing. This is why the WES Lottie campaign is so important.

“It’s a fun way to encourage girls into engineering and show the variety of engineering roles that are available – much more than what people might think at first,” said Melanie Zacheis, Senior Geotechnical Engineer.

“Even those of us who have been at Fugro for several years don’t necessarily know about all the different departments and operations that exist, so it’s also been a really positive means to bring people together from across the business. It has been impressive to see how much people have got on board with the idea,” she added.

Highlighting opportunities

Megan Magrosky, Wireline Engineer, and part of the geophysics team in Wallingford, said “It’s important for a campaign like this to reach girls before they start associating engineering as stereotypically ‘male’ activities. Girls can wall themselves off from opportunities if they’re not encouraged to see it as being something for them. At school, if you studied science that typically meant you were going to get into medicine, and there was no discussion of what other doors studying these subjects might open. This campaign is all about proving that ‘engineer’ as a term means far more than we typically think it does.”

Jane Emerson, Production Engineer based in Falmouth, said “It’s already had a very positive response from other staff within the business, particularly those who have children of their own. People have very quickly got behind it, which is great to see. We’re hoping that this can become something we can continue in future years.”

Follow Fugro across our social media platforms to see how Lottie enjoyed her time with our engineers and learn about the broader #WESLottieTour

Did you know?

• The number of women working in engineering roles has increased from 562,000 in 2010 to 936,000 in 2021

• There was an overall expansion of the engineering workforce from 5.3 million in 2010 to 5.6 million in 2021.

About the authors

Jade Gower is UK Communications and Marketing Manager at Fugro