Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
When disruption is the norm and you’re surrounded by complexity, you need clarity. Osborne Clarke's straight-talking legal experts will give you the insights and advice you need to get the right result.
Osborne Clarke is an international legal practice with over 270 Partners and more than 900 lawyers in 26 locations*. We help clients tackle the issues they’re facing today, and prepare for the ones they will face tomorrow.
*Services in India are provided by a relationship firm
Hello, and welcome to Building Women, the podcast that deconstructs the careers of women in the construction industry. I'm your host, Emily Clements Redken, an associate associate director in the construction disputes team at Osborne Clarke. And today, I'm joined by Helen Collie, a senior forensic structural engineer at HKA and a council member at the Institution of Structural Engineers. Helen's journey into engineering began with an inspirational female teacher at her all girls school in Wimbledon, which led to studying for her degree at UCL, a year working in Chicago, and a master's in construction law at King's College London. She now specializes as a forensic structural engineer acting day to day as an expert witness in dispute.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast, Helen. It's great to have you. Hi, Helen. It's great to have you here this morning. Thanks so much for joining me, agreeing to come on our Building Women Podcast.
Speaker 1:We really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you for having me. Really looking forward to having time to have a chat, not just about structural engineering like we usually do, but a little bit more around your life, your career, background, and your journey leading up to the day to day work you're now doing at HK. So I thought it'd be good to start from the beginning to understand your re engineering. So grateful if you could just tell me a little bit about where you grew up, how that shaped where you've ended up staying in your career.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Sure. So I grew up in South West London, where I still live. So I'm quite unusual in that I'm an an actual Londoner.
Speaker 2:A lot of people claim to be Londoners, but I've actually lived in London my whole life. And I even went to uni here. I've I've actually left very few times. So I grew up there in Leafy Tooting, which has changed a lot since I grew up there. And, yeah, grew up, went to an all girls school, so in Wimbledon.
Speaker 2:So didn't have a great deal of exposure to things like engineering, but did have one teacher who was an ex civil engineer who who basically pushed me to to take a look at it and consider it. My parents weren't technical at all. My dad ran a book selling business and and my mother wrote my mom wrote the copy for the catalog for this the business. So I'm now a non executive director of that business since he passed away. And so it's still a family business.
Speaker 2:And my brother was very into, like, acting, and that's what he kind of went into. So I was a bit of an outlier in that I decided to go and do engineering. But my parents were very supportive. They were, you know, just whatever you whatever you're good at, go do that. That sounds good.
Speaker 2:So here I am.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so interesting, the nonexec director side as well. So does that take much of your time now whilst you're
Speaker 2:No. Not not really. So I kind of check-in every so often Yeah. With the company. Obviously, it's retail, so it's not it's like online and retail.
Speaker 2:It's nothing I do in my day to day work. But it's quite interesting to to kind of see it and have it as another perspective. And I mean, it's very challenging at the moment, retail, and books especially because cost of living is like people see books as a luxury. And I was so lucky growing up that they they weren't. My house was just full of books.
Speaker 2:So and my mom was just constantly reading and and we were constantly encouraged to read. And I think that's, you know, I I did quite well at school probably in part because I was just constantly reading and learning about really weird and eclectic bits of history and and architecture and stuff. So because of what was around the house.
Speaker 1:You mentioned your teacher who was a civil engineer. So what subject did he teach? Was that
Speaker 2:Oh, she actually, she was a yeah. She was a female engineer. So way ahead of her time, I guess, when she was a civil engineer. She taught DT. She taught design technology, which I was actually pretty it was like my worst subject at school, mainly because I was not I'm not very good at, like, making things, and you have to make I could do all the theory on paper, but then when it came to actually making a box, I think I got hung up on perfecting it and it I just ended up with no I just end up with the parts of a box because I couldn't work out how to make it look how I wanted it to look.
Speaker 2:But she taught DT, and she basically championed this scheme in our school called the engineering education scheme, which brought in structure engineers from industry to with people studying for their a levels, and you kind of teamed up and you did a project. So so we I I was part of that, and we so we worked with these graduate structure engineers and kind of learned. I mean, at the time, we thought, yeah. Yeah. We're learning all about engineering and that, you know, we were learning this tiny tiny little corner of it, and it wasn't really representative, but it was enough to make me want to do it because it was problems basically, it was problem solving, and I enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:I was good at physics and maths. It kind of made sense to me. So
Speaker 1:And then how did you choose where you wanted to go on to study at university?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Basically, I was so unimaginative that I just thought I've lived in London my whole life to that point, but I haven't really lived it, the real real London, I think, because I was at home and I was at school in Wimbledon, and it was a bit of a, you know, like, you know, small school world. But also so where I ended up was UCL, and they had a really great engineering department. And I remember going to the open day meeting kind of the I think he was the head of design who was also an architect, and that was really important that it felt very design y as well as just maths. But also, I did just really stay in London.
Speaker 2:So which I then when I then did my gap year, which was also like working in London, I thought, maybe I should maybe I should leave London now, but it was kind of too late. I had a place at university, and UCL was very good, and it didn't feel like somewhere I should a place I should give up. So so, yeah, I end up in UCL. But I was lucky it was back in the days when if you went to London University, even if you lived in London, you could stay in halls. So I I ended up living on Charlotte Street in London and going to UCL, like, across Tom Court Road and at Gower Street, and was pretty amazing place to be for I won't even say what the rent was because it's so depressing how deep how deep it was to live right in the middle of London back then.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it was it was good. Yeah. I I never really regretted it. UCL was a
Speaker 1:great university. I'm sure. So was that a three year undergraduate? And then do you have to do any additional training after before you can qualify? I'm less familiar with the kind of engineering process.
Speaker 2:It's probably changed now, but I did a four year master's that came as a master's, and it was to to become chart to get your professional chartership. And then after that, you you kind of train on the job. So you work as an engineer, and you check off objectives. And when you reach, you know, a certain level of competency, you sit an interview, and you provide a portfolio that shows that you've met the level of competency in those objectives, and then you sit an exam. So yeah.
Speaker 2:So I did that process. You can do other routes for different engineering, but that that route was supported in my office. So I did that through working. It was pretty conventional. I worked for kind of medium medium sized engineering consultancies doing a variety of design work in The UK, a little bit in The Middle East.
Speaker 2:And I was lucky enough to go and and spend a year in The States as well because I worked for an American firm. So I I lived a year in Chicago. So having said that, didn't really leave London. I only leave to go to foreign foreign countries. I just don't go outside the N20 world, otherwise.
Speaker 2:But yeah. So I was lucky enough to get a year over there.
Speaker 1:How was that working out in Chicago? Was that really different to all the experience you'd had in London thus far?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was. The one word I would associate with Chicago, I think most people would, is cold. It was really cold. In the winter, was just really cold.
Speaker 2:And I remember walking along the street and then just walking into North Face and saying, can you just get you just sell me one of those coats that everyone except me, the blatant tourist, is wearing. So it was it was a bit of adjustment to the weather. But actually in the summer, Chicago is absolutely phenomenal. There's there's beaches along the lake and it's, like, beautiful. But in terms of the work, yeah, it was really interesting because well, it's actually kind of well, it is how I ended up working in forensics because they have in The States, they do a lot more forensic work.
Speaker 2:Kinda two reasons they have this I don't know the details, but they have, like, facade audits, that building audit, a stronger tradition of building audit, and in particular, a facade. So they have people who are very much trained in going and looking at existing buildings already. And then they they also have a lot more kind of insurance events, capped events. So storms, hurricanes, and things where engineers are needed to go and do damage assessment work. And the company I worked for, Thornton Thomasetti, had that kind of team.
Speaker 2:And then it also had people doing expert witness work or lit litigation support that they called it, which in The States is completely different. It's quite it's much more adversarial, if you can believe it. Because I've seen pretty adversarial over here, but it's more adversarial. And the the kind of rules are completely different about experts. You can advocate for your client and things like that.
Speaker 2:So it's it's completely different tradition, but there were people doing it. So it was really interesting to hear about that. But it was while I was there that I got involved assisting on a really big expert witness project that one of the principals in The States had been appointed on, but it was in The UK because he was a dual qualified engineer. So I got involved, that was really what led me to forensics forever as it was. I didn't move into it full time, but it was the the project that made me want to do it in the future.
Speaker 1:And how long had you been qualified at that stage when you sort of made that decision to focus on forensics?
Speaker 2:So that was it was super early. I I was in Chicago in 2009 and worked on that project into 2010, a little bit beyond, I think. So I'd not been I hadn't got chartered at that point. So I knew that I hadn't got enough experience to go be expert witness, but I could do the forensic work, so I kind of tried to stick my hand up for anything that came along that was forensic project. And I did go and work for a couple of years for a dedicated expert witness firm in The UK.
Speaker 2:And then I kinda moved on from there because I realized I didn't have enough design experience, and I wanted to go back. So I went back and then kind of I wouldn't call it dabbling because I was doing forensic work alongside design work and did that. And I also did my master's in construction law because I was really interested in the legal side of it. So I know you're smiling as if I'm totally mad. I'm a little bit it Rather than King's College one.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I did the King's
Speaker 1:College course. Did you enjoy that?
Speaker 2:I did. I I really loved it. I really I think like most people who did it, technical people who did it at some point, was like, yeah, I'm so gonna become a lawyer after this. I'm gonna convert, and that will be and then I didn't. I carried on.
Speaker 2:I was good at engineering, and it was a big, you know, it was a lot. I was kind of doing my professional exams at the same time as doing that course, and it was a lot. But in hindsight, I'm very pleased I did it then because, you know, life only really gets busier. So yeah. No.
Speaker 2:I loved it. I loved learning about the law, and I do I do just like learning. I think that's part of what I like about my job as well as it's constant. And engineering is always constantly learning because it's constantly changing. So, yeah, I I did that.
Speaker 2:And then in it wasn't until 2020 that I came to HKA, which was when, you know, I kind of I left design. I left the design office and came to a firm that was focused on disputes.
Speaker 1:And you also very briefly mentioned working in The Middle East. Where did that fit in with your kind of trajectory? So I didn't go I didn't
Speaker 2:go to The Middle East, but I did design work. Yeah. So I worked on projects. And, I mean, honestly, the reason I didn't go was because at the time, in particular, I was working on a lot Saudi projects, and you effectively, as a woman, couldn't really go without a chaperone, and there was no point sending two engineers when you could send one male one. So I didn't go.
Speaker 2:I wasn't, you know, I wasn't that sad about it. I think Saudi in particular has changed loads, and it it's a much better place for women now than it was. It would have been quite a difficult working environment, I think.
Speaker 1:So have you had any other sort of challenges in along the way in your career or any particular mentors that have helped you level up and progress?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So two in particular. Two people. So Joe Burns, who was at Thornton Thomasetti, and he was appointed expert witness on a few really high profile expert witness cases. And I got to assist him.
Speaker 2:And he was I mean, he was just he's a very, very, very talented engineer. He was also due qualified as an architect. He's brilliant. He was very happy to to give people as much responsibility or as much input into a project as they could take. And because I was so interested in forensics, I think I really dived into the projects I was assisting him on.
Speaker 2:So I got a lot of exposure to kind of the legal clients and things and got to see all that work like, you know, joint meetings with him and things which are, you know, really specific types of environment to this kind of work that I got maybe a lot sooner because he really I think he could see that I really loved it, he wanted me to wanted to help me and lift me up into that if it was something I wanted to do. So shout out to Joe. He he's he's still working, isn't it, Jen? He's he's based in Chicago. And then the other is Tanya DeHug, who also worked at Pilbara Thomasetti.
Speaker 2:She's now in Australia with OraCon. And she was the president of the iStruckT a couple of years ago. And she was so I worked for her when she was in London, but she kind of was the one who brought me back into the iStrucT, which is the institution structure engineers, because she had a big push to kind of increase diversity and kind of push that ADI agenda. But in particular, to try and increase the number of female fellows in iStruckT because the number of fellows doesn't really represent the membership. And then there is, you know, a lot you can talk about lots of reasons for that.
Speaker 2:We have a real leaky pipeline problem in engineering with with women leaving at a certain point. But also, women are probably not great at knowing, yes. I I deserve that. I'll now apply for that. You have to kind of write something that says how great you are, and and it's like I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think women are slightly less good at what what putting themselves forward to do that kind of thing. But it was a really good process because I let met lots of other women that Tanya was mentoring. It was a good way back into the the iStruct tea, which is kind of I've retained. And I'm sure they won't mind me saying this once you've once you've volunteered, and they've got you. So you end up doing as much as they can persuade you to do.
Speaker 2:So I'm really pleased that Tanya did kind of bring me back in, but she's a great champion for for female engineers.
Speaker 1:And how do you find juggling that with your day to day expert witness work? Because that sounds like a pretty full role in itself, what what you're doing in the ice drug d.
Speaker 2:At the minute, I'm I'm managing to balance it. I'm chairing a I'm chairing a conference next week. So I'm chairing a risk structural safety and risk conference next week, which is one of those things that I said yes to, and then realized that actually turning a conference is quite quite a lot of work. And it's really interesting, and I've really enjoyed meeting all the speakers. But that's been a bit of a challenge to get the even just to schedule meetings with the number of different people taking part.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I just I do make time for it because I think it's really important. So and then one of the things I've got much better at in particular recently is, like, having boundaries between things between work and other things. Yeah. And this is kind of work, but it's also it's something I really want to do. And if I did if I if I did nothing like this, I think it would be to my detriment and to my career's detriment as well.
Speaker 2:So I've kind of got better at keeping it keeping that time sacred. I have had to miss the meeting or something, you know, project work often has to take priority. But at the moment, I'm managing to balance it because it's I think it's important. Yeah. That's that's really interesting.
Speaker 2:You sort of touched a little bit on some of the difficulties being a woman in construction, particularly if you're working out in different jurisdictions, slightly different cultures,
Speaker 1:and how the representation is not always what utopia the ice ice truck d, but moving in the right direction. So focusing more on on the positive side, what are the good things and the upsides that you've seen in your career of of working as a senior woman in construction? I mean, there's one really obvious one, and
Speaker 2:I might get heat for saying it, but it's that in terms of kind of my business or or what I do, people remember me because they don't offer me a female structure engineer. As soon as I say structure engineer, I they tend to remember because I might be the only one that they've met. Yeah. The only structural engineer they've met that is a woman. And so that that's kind of like something to remember you by.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, okay. Fine. I'll I'll take it. If that means you remember me, then I'll take it. It's the start of a conversation, which sometimes can be really helpful when you're out kind of doing business.
Speaker 2:But in other ways, I think it does you can be a different perspective in the room, which is nice. Yep. So it's I think it's led to better outcomes in in, like, design teams that I've worked in being a different perspective. But, you you know, you never know because you don't you don't get the control of the room without you. But I I think it is nice to be a different voice.
Speaker 2:But also, it's I think a positive is that I think women in construction is quite a good group in terms of we women in construction are very good at talking about talking up and supporting other women in construction. Obviously, I don't know what it's like in other industries, but it does feel like quite a supportive network of people. And that's, you know I don't love LinkedIn all the time, but it is you can see it on there, the kind of people talking to each other and sharing insights and things. And that is nice. And I've also made really good friends through it.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, there there have been positives. And it's nice to think about them actually because it's not it's not a question I've been asked before.
Speaker 1:No. I I completely agree. And I think that being memorable and not being a bit of a USP is definitely might well make make the best of that. But also, I do agree that in construction, because it is a particularly difficult industry in terms of it being quite male dominated still, I noticed as well that the women within it make a particular effort to set up networks, to speak to each other, to support one another as a result. And, obviously, I can only really speak to construction because that is my industry, but I get the impression from speaking to others.
Speaker 1:It's more so in construction than some some other industries.
Speaker 2:Construction's got a bit more of an image problem or sort of more entrenched as a a male. It's a thing that boys do. And I see that even in my kids. You know, as you can imagine, I've brought up my I've got two girls, and I brought them up really like, no, here's building blocks in Thomas and Tank Engine, and you can't have pink. And and it just to work to a certain point, and then somehow outside influences come in.
Speaker 1:I think my parents are similar. My dad I have a sister as well. Was focused on giving us Kinects and Lego, and, yeah, I'm still here in my pink top with my pink background on my screen. And I am in construction, I suppose. But, yeah, it's it's interesting how quickly things seem to be ingrained.
Speaker 1:Thinking about that and back to when you start out in your career, is there anything that you would give yourself advice now to your younger self knowing what you know now about about the industry and your role? So I would not think about this because I would give myself two pieces of advice, they sound like they contradict each other, but they they don't. So I
Speaker 2:have to explain why not. First is I would probably just say to myself, just keep doing what you're doing. You're not too weird or too difficult or you're not wanting something that you're not allowed to want. Like, I think you you do spend a bit of a of time as as a woman. I think there's, like, a lot of insidious messaging of, like, oh, you you can't be ambitious.
Speaker 2:But what I I just knew what I wanted to do, and so I kind of set out to do it. And but then you kind of doubt yourself all the time. So I would go back and say, no. You're you're doing the right things. Just keep doing them.
Speaker 2:But then on the other hand, my other advice would be also just to chill out a bit. In the process of doing those things, I I spent a lot of time worrying about them being the wrong thing. Or as soon as I did got one thing I wanted, then I was straight onto, like, oh, what do I do need to do next? Instead of, like, looking around and going, oh my gosh. I'm, like, in Chicago.
Speaker 2:And I'm I'm sure I did. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't there, like, in the office fifteen hours a day to make my career. I really did enjoy it, but I think I was sort of constantly worrying about what was gonna come next. And I think it's something you can only really learn with time. And even in my job now, you know, you get a period where you might you might be a bit quiet and you suddenly go, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:What if it's never what if it this is it. I'm never gonna get work again. Yeah. And you have to go through cycles of proving that that's not the case. And now I'm like, no.
Speaker 2:I know I know what to do. I know I'm good at it. It will come. And I know I've got loads of people who can work with me and support me and and make it happen. But you kind of have to learn that through time.
Speaker 2:So I would say to myself, just to, like, chill out a bit. Don't worry. Enjoy it. And and lean on people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I think it's hard for everybody to pause and look around and enjoy it and give themselves a pat on the back. We're all sort of hardwired to be, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? What must I achieve next?
Speaker 1:I think that's quite quite normal.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You have to trust your judgment. I think that's what it's really hard to do when you're in your twenties. It's hard to trust your judgment because you don't you're looking around. And it must be much harder now.
Speaker 2:I finally, thankfully, weaned myself off Instagram, I think. But when you're looking around and and but even LinkedIn. Like, LinkedIn is it's useful and it's interesting and I do use it, but then sometimes, you're like, these people can't be like, they can't love all of these things and be doing all of these things in the way that they're saying they are. Like, social media is not real.
Speaker 1:Please teach me how to
Speaker 2:get off Instagram. I just you you honestly, you have to go cold turkey.
Speaker 1:But no. Yeah. Comparison is a a difficult one and can take a lot of energy unnecessarily. And I think it's it can be similar on LinkedIn as well, can't it? So when you're not sort of doing iStructy, looking after your family, structural engineering, all the other millions of things and staying away from Instagram.
Speaker 1:Are there any It's it. Or podcasts or any other sort of tips that you have for how you switch off and relax?
Speaker 2:Recently, I've discovered a podcast called Talk Nineties to me, and I grew up. So I went from eight to 18 in the nineties. So it was like really formative Yeah. Like really formative years where then being a teenager in the nineties for a really specific experience, I should think. And this podcast is all about, like, nineties culture.
Speaker 2:And so the last one I listened to was on, like, Buffy the Van Poetslayer and what a cultural phenomenon it was. And it's just really that is, like, sort of nostalgic, but we've changed. Like, interesting to hear it from a, like, dissecting it way. I'm terrible at books because I don't read fiction. So the other thing I do is and sometimes with my kids, but we have a game on PlayStation, which other platforms are available, called Stardew Valley.
Speaker 2:And you basically have a farm, and you have to farm you have to plant seeds, and you can go fishing, and you can go mining, and then you have to collect stuff, and then you make friends with relatives. I mean, it sounds like a it sounds like a really cult.
Speaker 1:Age of Empires, which I used to play a lot.
Speaker 2:Oh, so I never played Age of but I used to play Civilization. It's like a really small version of Civilization because you've just got your tiny little farm. My girls play it. There's nine and seven, but they play it, and so we all have a farm together. And and then I just find it totally, like, it's such a good way to switch off because you have to pay enough attention to do it.
Speaker 2:And it's just like your brain's completely at peace. I just play a day of Stardew Valley to, like, wind down.
Speaker 1:No. That sounds that sounds great. Nice to do something a little bit different, completely separate from from the day job.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's definitely very different
Speaker 1:from the day job. Oh, well, thank you so much, Helen. I've really enjoyed talking to you, hearing all about your career and sort of the ups and downs and some of the really important messages about trying to get more women into the industry and also the upside to being a woman, women in construction. So I'm sure all the listeners would have found it really interesting, inspiring. So, yeah, thank you for your time.
Speaker 2:Brilliant. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.