Every year, the Women’s Engineering Society recognises the top 50 UK-based women working in the discipline. This year’s theme is sustainability, and among the winners announced today – International Women in Engineering Day – is Keller UK HSEQ Advisor Laura Williams.
We caught up with Laura to find out more about the award and why sustainability is so important to her.
Congratulations on being a WE50 winner. How does it feel?
It was a surprise, but I was quite pleased! I found out while I was furloughed from work due to the coronavirus, so it was a lovely pick me up. Normally the Society has a fancy dinner and awards evening, but obviously they can’t do that this year. So we’re having a virtual ceremony and I’ve said to my boyfriend, Chris, he’ll have to make me a posh meal!
What does sustainability mean to you and why is it so important?
Sustainability is obviously important, but for me it’s about the social aspect of it, getting people involved, engaging with others and the community. It’s about building those relationships and it’s good for people’s mental health and wellbeing. For me that’s very powerful.
How were you nominated for this award?
I was nominated by Luke Deamer, who’s with us on secondment from the University of Surrey, looking at sustainable geotechnical solutions. He put me forward for some of the sustainability initiatives I’ve run.
Can you tell us about what you did?
We’ve been corporate members of the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust for a while now, but I got them to come in and give a talk to colleagues about how we could put some sustainability initiatives in place. Off the back of that, we’ve turned three more patches of land at the Ryton head office into wildlife area, sowing wildflowers to complement the original one and placing bug hotels around the yard. We’ve even turned some old hard hats into hanging planters and plan to turn old plastic industrial containers into ponds.
We’ve also been working with the Trust to help them on their drive to plant more hedgerow corridors in the local area, which are really vital for wildlife.
As well as that, I wanted us to engage more with the local village, so I arranged volunteer days for us to do litter-picks.
These aren’t the first initiatives you’ve run for the benefit of colleagues. Tell us about the pink hard hats.
October is breast cancer awareness month in the UK and, as most people know, it affects astronomical numbers of women. But I was shocked to discover that it also kills around 80 men a year in the UK alone. I wasn’t aware of this and neither were a lot of other people I spoke to. As many of our colleagues are men, we decided to promote awareness of this important issue. We got people wearing some branded hats which were bright pink and the campaign got a lot of social media awareness by posting a different picture a day of Keller employees wearing the hats. We also raised around £1,500 for charity. If it saves the life of even one person it will have been worth it.
Earlier this year you mentored a young female apprentice. Why do you think it’s important to support women in the industry?
Although it’s definitely changing, there aren’t huge numbers of women in the industry. That’s why we need to support women and shout about things like the WE50 so more young females are aware of the career opportunities out there for them.
More information
Find out more about the Women’s Engineering Society and the awards.