Project Pipeline: County Durham and Tees Valley

Good afternoon

As part of our contract, Farrans is committed to delivering a range of social and economic activity to benefit the community.  Last week, I thoroughly enjoyed attending two engagement sessions at a local college and school.

The first of these was at South West Durham Training where my colleague Carol Fleming and I talked to their engineering students. We explained about the work we were doing in Durham on behalf of Northumbrian Water, plus other civil engineering schemes delivered elsewhere by Farrans.  Carol went on to talk about her own experiences as a senior engineer, her personal background and how she became qualified – she was very inspirational.  That's Carol on the right of the photo in the yellow jumper.

My second session was at The Oaks special needs school in Spennymoor. I was invited by Durham Works to be a Business Ambassador in a ‘Speed Networking’ event, where pupils from Year 10 had to “Guess My Job”. We all spent a lively 2 hours working with lots of small groups, who each quizzed us for 10 minutes before trying to guess our roles. I took along my hard hat, hi-viz jacket and ear defenders as a clue to my sector, which they all really enjoyed trying on!

I’m looking forward to doing many more of these sessions with schools over the coming months, helping to inspire our young people to be the civil engineers of the future.

Many thanks,

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner