Andrea Villar-Arevalo, 'My opinion matters'

I'm Andrea and I'm a Project Engineer. An interest in engineering usually comes due to a high interest in Mathematics and Physics at school - this was my case when I was little. Engineering is definitely not a repetitive industry - every project is different, making it a dynamic and a challenging job.

Engineering used to be a male dominated industry which required you to prove your ability as an engineer to avoid awkward situations. It's fair to say that as a woman, you need to put in more effort to overcome these obstacles, but this does mean that we have the opportunity to develop different abilities and improve ourselves in different ways.

While working in the industry, I have experienced the following situations: people telling me what to do when they are not aware of our procedures, clients telling my colleagues that I have done something wrong when it was not the case, or operatives on site have mentioned how stunning my smile was… These situations usually happen when working with operatives on site, showing that there is some work left to be done within the industry, but it is part of our engineering job: design and bring it to construction.