What are your key strengths?
- Adaptability: I’ve worked on-site and in an office, both in a team and by myself. I’ve organised and managed projects for work months in advance. I’ve been on call for emergencies such as parapet strikes and bridge failures. I’ve worked in fast-paced and high-risk environments, creating multiple designs a day for schemes that last only a week.
- Stakeholder management: I’ve coordinated with councils, contractors, legal teams, and environmental teams. I’ve worked with clients, producing designs and providing support and guidance for schemes.
- Problem solving and quality assurance developed as an engineer and in current role.
Solved a complex Problem?
Buried Bridges
- Situation: Two bridges were buried beneath a road adjacent to Limehouse Basin in London
- Task: I had to figure out what these assets were and what the company could and needed to do with them
- Action: I first started collecting data from the archives to determine the construction, location, and ownership of the assets. I then created a feasibility report outlining the costs, risks, and benefits of four options. These were ‘Do Nothing’, ‘Transfer Ownership’, ‘Infill Voids’, and ‘Create Access for Inspection’
Worked under pressure?
Wykewell Lift Bridge Failure
- Situation:
Have you ever taken initiative?
Highway Structures Team Email Box
- When I was in the highway structures team, we used to receive received asset queries and issues from other teams via email.
- However, these emails were sent to the each member of my team either separately or all CC’d in together.
- I was never a big fan of this system as I found it a it counter intuitive and one day we all reieved an email about a bridge that had degraded and needed analysing to determine its current allowable load capacity.
- Three members of the team began working on this issue separately and it wasn’t until they had each completed the analysis that they realised they had all done the same task and collectively wasted time.
- Seeing this I go speak to our IT team and have them set up a team email box so each person could flag each issue as being undertaken or completed.
- I sent a notice to every team in the organisation informing thm of the new email folder and from that day on we never had an issue.
- Its not the most ground breaking achievement, but I believe it demonstrates me seeing a problem and solving it without being instructed to.
Why are you leaving your current role?
I’m looking to move away from contract work and into a stable role with clearer progression and long-term development
- I’ve enjoyed my currently role and the flexibility that comes with contracting, but I’m looking for more long-term stability and structured growth.
- The nature of freelance work means progression and development opportunities are limited, and I’ve reached a point where I want to build deeper expertise, take on more responsibility, and progress within a single organisation.
- I’m ready to commit to a role where I can grow over time and make a sustained contribution.
Why do you want to work for us?
If I’m honest, I’m being quite particular about my career going forward, as I’m looking for a role with stable, structured growth and a company with a strong, collaborative culture, all of which I believe your company offers.
- If I could expand on that, I’m looking for a role where I can continue learning, develop under experienced people, and progress toward more senior responsibility.
- What attracts me to your company is this combination of structured development, clear progression, and a collaborative culture.
- From what I’ve learned about your team, it’s a place where people are supported, challenged, and given clear direction — which is exactly what I’m looking for at this stage of my career.
Handle conflict/disagreement
Argument with one of the Groundforce Shorco reps who later reported me to upper management.
Depends on the type of conflict and the person you are disagreeing with, but I mainly focus on trying to understand their reasoning as it is said that most disagreements come from different assumptions and priorities. From your can make the decision to either stand firm or compromise.
- Depends on the situation
- There was a time where a colleague wanted to take over some design work I to do and the disagreement arose because I couldn’t see a reason why that would be practical as I was already familiar with the bridge. After talking with them I learn that they want to get a bit more evidence for their chartership application and after that I was more than happy for them to take over.
- Another situation the same colleague wanted to switch roles with someone during a confined spaces inspection I was leading. For this situation I put my foot down as the inspection plan had already been discussed and agreed and I wasn’t willing to start changing things on the day when I didn’t need to.
Why do you think you’re a good fit for our role/company?
Alignment → Skills → Value → Motivation
“I would say its down to an alignment of skills, values, and motivation”
“I think I’m a good fit because my experience, working style, and career goals align well with what your company is looking for.”
“I’ve worked onsite and in an office, in a team and by myself, a within a fast-paced highly regulated environment. All of which gives me a level of adaptability to hit the ground running in the role.”
“These situations have also allowed me to interact with various people. I’ve been customer service via phone and emails, and I’ve been face to face with clients on the towpath.”
“I bring strong skills in problem-solving and quality assurance, which I’ve developed through both engineering and my current role.”
“In terms of values [company value or way of working], which is something I’ve consistently applied in my previous roles.”
“Overall, I’m motivated by [what the company does / how it operates], and I believe I could contribute effectively while continuing to grow here.”
Can you tell us about a personal achievement at work?
Context → Your contribution → Result → Why it matters
“One achievement I’m particularly proud of was leading a team in a large scale inspection of Narrow Street Swing Bridge.”
“This bridge was a box girder design about 50m in length and 10m wide. Not only did its external components need inspecting, but its internal components needed inspecting as well. Due to its size, its proximity to the River Thames, and the hazards caused by confined spaces inside the bridge, it meant that this inspection required a very heavy health and safety presences throughout.”
“My role was to organise the inspection and supervise the work onsite. This involved a lot of securing permits, hiring equipment, arranging accommodation, and communicating with both internal and external stakeholders to ensure the safety of the public.”
As a result, everything was in place on the day of the inspection and the inspection itself was completed safely and without issue.
What made it especially meaningful to me was that not only did it demonstrated leadership, communication, and overall project management, but it was the first time I had ever done it and it reinforced how I add value in a team.”
What’s your biggest weakness?
- The one thing I’ve had to work on consistently throughout my career is trying to solve every problem myself.
- So instead of asking for help I’ve always tried to figure things out on my own.
- One instance that comes to mind is when I was at groundforce shorco and I was given the task of designing a piece of equipment.
- I didn’t know how to do this so I spent a lot of time trying and failing to figure it out before I finally go it right.
- When I took the completed task back to my manager, he was surprised that I had done it because the overall goal of the exercise was to not know how to do it and ask for help.
- And by asking for help, I would have been able to complete the task in less time and with less frustration.
How do you handle stress/deadlines?
- If its an immediate stressful situation or I feel a little overwhelmed, I simply take my self to the kitchen or cafeteria and make myself a brew.
- After that I find the best thing to do is to create a list, either on a spreadsheet or just plain paper, of the tasks I need to do based on their priority.
- When I have all my tasks laid out in front of my, I can then break these tasks down into smaller tasks and then break those tasks into even smaller tasks.
- At the end of this end up with a sort of checklist that pretty much plans out what needs to be done.
- I find that having the tasks and objectives physically in front of me makes it easier to manage stress.
What did you do as a Bridge Engineering?
- I was part of a team responsible for ensuring the Trust’s assets met their statutory obligations.
- This involved a lot tactile inspections, structural analysis, and risk-based prioritisation of repairs and investigations.
- We were also on call for parapet strikes and emergency works on high-risk structures.
What did you do after CRT?
- During that period I had caring responsibilities, so I took on a variety of flexible contract roles mainly centred data validation and evaluation.
What do you do in your current role as a STEM/Team Lead?
- Currently a team lead on AI projects.
- My most recent project is a civil and structural engineering-focused project aimed at frontier-level reasoning.
- The models don’t know how to answer non-liner and non-textbook problems, so the clients are hiring experience professionals in a multitude of domains to teach the models.
- I’m responsible for a team of contributors and my role is to ensure their output is aligned with the project requirements as specified by the client.
- These project requirements aren’t static as they are always changing because the projects themselves are iterative.
- I have to pass these changes back to the contributor.
- This means I’m doing a lot of peer reviews of highly specialised and complex technical content.
