Hello and welcome and thanks for listening to Carbon Climates, an energy podcast dedicated
to discussing all things energy, carbon and sustainability. We also like to point out
what's getting hot, aside from our planet. I'm your host Enya and today I'm joined by
not one but two Carbon Climates and co-hosts, Kristin and David.
That's me.
Also, Kristin and David, yes, who I'll be introducing shortly today. But before we get
into today's topic, how's your week been guys and can you tell me a bit about yourself?
Kristin, can you go first?
Yeah, I'll go first. My week's been a bit full on. I'm off on Friday, so everything's
got to be fit in to the four days. My background, I'm a mechanical engineer and I studied my
Bachelor of Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pretoria. And now I'm
pursuing my Masters in renewable energy and energy management.
Love it.
Yeah, yeah, that's been about me.
Very good.
So about me, I sort of similarly to Chris, I'm off on Friday, so I have to fit my weekend
to the four days. Fortunately, I haven't been as busy as Kristin sounds. Yeah, I am a design
civil engineer, specifying in geotechnical background, but I'm also still a student at
Queen's and I'll be going back to get my Masters degree next year.
Wow, very impressive. And how long have you guys been in this sector?
Well, so I've been working full time for a year and a half now and then a year before
that during my studies I was working. And Dave?
Yeah, so I've actually enrolled into a sandwich year, so that means that you go out on placement
for a year in the middle of your degree. So I started at the company I'm still currently
working with part time in 2021. So I've been in and out for two years now with them. Obviously,
when I went back to uni last year, I was just doing part time hours and then I've been working
over the summer now until I start my my Masters next year.
Very cool. And Sue, when you guys were at school or college, did you ever envisage yourself
in these roles?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I knew I'd been STEM from very early on, but I think I chose mechanical
around 14. So since then, you know, that was really what I wanted to go into.
Yeah, again, similar vein to Chris. I later on, probably not as early as 14, but I would
always have been finished myself in a STEM career and engineering really just sort of
showed up as like one of the best jobs that you could do in that background. So I just
thought that any one of those engineering backgrounds would be a good one to go into
and I just landed on civil.
So nice. Nice. OK, so if you can put it together from Chris and David's descriptions of their
jobs, today's topic is mechanical and civil engineering. How much energy do we need when
working on site? Yeah, OK. Well, I thought it was nice, but anyway. So like typically
for construction projects, there are many different fields that collaborate together.
There's mechanical, electrical, civil, structural and energy. We all have one main goal of the
project to meet the client's objectives and designs. There's also a lot of external meetings
and we would run into each other often where we get to learn a bit more about what each
field is doing. So I'm a sustainability engineer and I have limited working knowledge of what
a day to day is like for other sectors such as mechanical and civil. However, from my
research online, the consensus seems to be that civil engineering, you have to love dealing
with people and to be a mechanical engineer, you have to love dealing with mechanical equipment.
Can I get your guys' votes on that? Not true. Not true. It very much depends. I think consulting,
you deal with so many people. If you were to go into more of a manufacturing field where
you are working with CNC machines, maybe you'd work with more mechanical equipment, but consulting
definitely so much to do with people. It's funny that you say that civil, like you have
to love dealing with people because like me, Chris would talk a lot about work and from
what we chat about, she definitely deals with a lot more people than me being the mechanical
engineer. Dave doesn't talk to anybody much. Sometimes it's just like you don't get a phone
call at all. In my company, we don't really have that many sort of meetings. We work on
a lot smaller scale niche projects than what Chris seems to be doing in the mechanical
sector. It's like big projects where a lot's going on at once and people have to be kept
in the loop. I think it depends though, Dave's, we're obviously in the building services
sector, but Dave would be in geotechnics so definitely differs. It would still be on the
same site obviously as one sector, but it's very much disconnected from that. You wouldn't
need to know what's going on with the buildings around too much. That's where most of the
correlation of a lot of different engineering backgrounds comes together in the building
sector. For us, because it's such a niche outside area, we don't have to interact as
much with and get as much sort of collaboration between different companies. We don't talk
to as many people as you would think, but I'm sure other civil projects like roads and
bridges, there'd be a lot of collaboration with the people. My main takeaway David from
that is that you're telling me Google's wrong. Yeah, Google's wrong. Not reliable. That's
really great to hear and it's great to hear this is the reason why I wanted to infuse
different branches, different sectors to get an insight into the field because I know so
many people who are maybe 10 years into the energy field and maybe don't even know how
different sectors interact. I kind of came from a practical side where we were installing
renewables insulation to the theoretical design side and I have to say the jump was very different
and I wouldn't have known about each sector if it existed or not. So it's really great
to hear. Do you think Kristen, does that mirror real life? You would be the more social or
would it be David or Eli? I think it depends. I'd be more professionally social. But Dave's
from a small town and every person you run into where he's from, you'd say hello to.
So David would be more social with more people I'd say if that makes sense. Possibly. Just
when you're saying you're from a small town, it's like the reverse journey. Don't stop
believing. Just a small town block. Yeah, exactly. So I know you guys talked a bit about your
master's degrees in your introduction. Big props to you. I've done them like I've done
it before. It's hard. Can you think of anything in your jobs, any other sort of training or
prep do you get for performing your roles? Before starting the role? Or during. I know
for us as Sustainable Energy Engineers to become an energy assessor, we usually work
for about a period of two years and then we go on to do the training or like the examination.
But the likes of say, chartership or has that been talked about? I mean, chartership for
our industry comes a bit further down the line and I think minimum five years experience
really before you become chartered. So yeah, you really just start into the job and obviously
you can start with graduate memberships in these, what would you call them? Like institutions?
Represented. Yeah. For the engineering council, you start in sort of graduate memberships
and you start collecting your CPD, so continued professional development. You can start training.
They have training on drainage, ventilation, every little niche thing has its own. And
is this taken a lot from CIPC guides and all? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Often, you know, when a
new CIPC guide comes out, when a new version comes out, they often have a lot of CPDs coming
along with that just to train the professionals in the new standards. So that's sort of the
continued training and then in-house often they'll have training on, for example, we've
had revit training, we've had training on specific boilers and that going on from the
senior engineers. So yeah, yeah. Well, it sounds like a really great company. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. But yeah, dude, what about yourself? So I know you're still studying
at the minute. Yeah. I'm like, but in your rural Noi, like would they be sending you
any for any, I don't know, like you guys have a civil engineers would have an institution
institution as well. Yeah, civil engineers. That's essentially the same thing as the I
Structy, which is another one, which for structural engineers. But yeah, I mean, like there's
loads of good stuff on their website and you can be a member the whole time here at university
for free. And like they have a weekly paper, loads of information that you can just get
for free, essentially, if you're a student. And also, I mentioned briefly before about
the sandwich here, I think that's a really good way of getting some experience before
going into your actual role, because you get a whole year of working in an actual engineering
company. Yeah, it's always different when you're studying. Yeah, like, the university
is great for learning stuff, but it's so broad that you kind of get lost a little bit in
what you want to do. So in my in my bachelors, there was six modules every year. And the
job I'm in at the minute really only covers one of those modules. So you kind of get an
idea of how broad university is and then you can go into a company and kind of get lost
because you only know the basics of something. So it's always good to, I think, get that
year experience while you're studying as well. Definitely. I couldn't agree with you more.
Like I did a year experience and it just opened my eyes. I was like, oh, this is actually
engineering. Okay. Absolutely. And it's so much different in industry interacting with
contractors interacting with your seniors. It's not like you're working alone like you
would do where you're studying and everything's a lot more broad. There's never a final answer
for anything. There's just, you know, what's the better, more efficient, more time efficient
solution. So it is different to studying for sure. I like what you said there, because
I feel like it helps. And it also helps like when you're talking to those people, build
your confidence for when you're talking to them next time. For sure. Yeah, sure. Especially
at such a young age. The sandwich is such a good idea. Yeah. And companies are usually
very good with their students. Like if they, if they, if they take you on, they want you
to be there and they're going to help you out and they're not going to have you doing
stuff that isn't of benefit to you. So yeah, it is a good way to get some experience. That's
good. And like definitely I could see like you in the position now, like you, like you
do in your sandwich year, like with that, I, like, I know a lot of people who maybe studied
mechanical engineering and they never did a placement or never had any experience. And
they even did a masters in it as well. And they're actually in something completely different.
Now I think they're in data. So yeah, just because shows like, you know, it really just
like, like puts, puts it into perspective, oh, this is what I'm going to be doing for
the next 30 years. Yeah, exactly. And I feel like too many, like there's been, well definitely
in my time, not too sure now, I need to get more research out there, but say in my time,
the money people that maybe two years in, they realized I've made a mistake. And it's
like, like you've, you've realized two years in and you feel, you might feel like you're
stuck in this career for the next 20 years and being happy for a job. That happened to
a guy that went on the placement to the same company as I did the same year. He like done
the year placement, sort of thought, don't know if I'm sure on this and is doing a different
thing now. So it didn't waste an extra two years doing something that they didn't like.
So you know, the option is always open to switch even once you've started. People with
the BN generally have switched to teaching and ended up working more in an engineering
sort of subject within teaching. So you can always switch it. I think feeling like you're
stuck in your twenties is a bit of a broad statement, you know? Okay. Yeah. Fair. Fair.
Yep. And like my, like my perspective is always, I think I'm going to be doing this for the
next 30 years. I would just want, I want to enjoy it. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But that's
great. Before we move on to our next section, Kristen, interesting fact about you. You immigrated
here from South Africa. Yes. Yeah. So I know you're a mechanical engineer. With mechanical
engineers, you guys design a lot of systems, especially in buildings such as the heating,
ventilation, air conditioning, hot water. I could go on, but I'm not like, you know,
it's a lot of lists. Okay. Yeah. But what were the big changes to you moving over here
and looking at this work? I think the main difference before I would have been working
in more industrial systems and now I'm working more residential, so apartment blocks and
that sort of thing. So, you know, the standards are quite different between industrial and
residential and, and because obviously it's a living space. So they're a lot stricter
on insulation and heating. And the biggest change, I think going from South Africa to
here is the heating systems in buildings, because we don't have integrated heating
in South Africa. So that would have been a major change to get used to. And it's something
that's standard within residential units. So that just paired with freezing. We've never
considered freezing in Joberg, no less. Joberg. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot that's what you call
it, Joberg. Yeah. And I was like, oh, so nice. Yeah. But South Africa, a lot of standards
are taken from a combination of British and American standards. So they wouldn't have
been too far off working with, working with the governmental standards. Okay. Yeah. And
David, you immigrated from Korea. That's correct. A little R down the road. Yeah, like different
world. No, it's lovely up there. No, it is, before I go back home and then everyone's
like really mad at me. Yeah, you get shunned. You get shunned all the time. Like we heard
the podcast. We were the 20s years. Yeah, nobody says hello to everybody. Cut that out.
Oh, brilliant. Okay. Well, now we're going to move on to our next section. This is a
bit where I ask you guys some questions or just ask for estimated guesses. And each episode
I tailor this section and just gather some research and I try to call it a different
name each time. So this week's name, it's called Let's Keep It Civil with These Mechanical
Issues. Like, yeah, I was like, you know what, I did like up several mechanical jokes and
there is not a lot out there. No, I think keeping it civil is the best one you can guess.
Okay. Well, yes. So I'm going to spit some facts at you from Statista.co.uk. Just so
you know. This is legit. Okay, well, I'm going to ask for some guesses. From Data Taken
in 2022, how many civil engineers do you think there are in the UK? In the whole UK? In the
whole of the UK? I'm going to say... I don't think people are in the whole UK. Just first
off. You carry the one. Yeah, carry the one. I'll give you a clue. Okay, it's in the tens
of thousands. I would say about 20,000. What's your guess? I think it'll be like kind of
high. Because there's so many different regions that civil covers. I'm going to say 50,000.
Okay, well, the actual answer is 92,000. Wow. Yes. That's a few. Yeah. And did you know
this is an 8% increase from 2010 figures? So we can either chop that up to a population
boom or more people are entering the field of civil engineering. You're welcome. Yeah,
that was you. Okay, so from the same website, what do you think the figure is for mechanical
engineers? I think there are actually more mechanical engineers. Okay. I'm going to say
120,000. 120,000, okay. I'm going to stick to my guns and say that we outrank. There's
more of us than you. I'm going to go, I still think it's going to be high though. Maybe
85,000. Okay. Well, this website states there is 55,000 as of 2022. Only 55? Yeah. Okay.
And did you know this is a 33% increase from figures taken in 2010? Oh my goodness. So
yeah, the medical engineers, they're feeling it. They're feeling the pressure. Oh no. We're
in high demand. Yeah. Yeah. But yes, well, as we stated before, sorry, before we move
on to the next bit. Oh no, I suppose I can wrap this into the, that's keeping civil around.
Okay. Well, the built environment, geotechnical, that would kind of maybe be covered underneath
it. The built environment. Like when you're- Kind of, yeah. We kind of do with landscaping
a lot. Yeah. We do a lot of slope stability. Yeah. Okay. Well, so this question does still
apply to you. Okay. How much percentage of carbon emissions do you think the built environment
contributes to the UK? Oh, loads. I will accept. Yeah. Percentage. Can we both answer this?
We can answer at the same time and like we can. I'm going to say, I'm going to say 35%.
Okay. So built environment, are we including both commercial and residential? Yep. I think,
think about 45 to 50%. Wow. Okay. Guys, it is 40%. That was good. If it took an average,
like you guys would be right. Very nice. And did you know that the construction sector
alone contributes 11% to global carbon emissions? My word. Yeah. It's a big industry to be in.
But yeah. Yeah. So that's the end of that section. It's just taking a minute to take
it all in there. But that's brilliant. Well, before we wrap up, guys, do you have any advice
for future prospective engineers looking to get into the construction or geotechnical
sector? Well, I'd say definitely do a shadow time. I know in high school here, in secondary
school. Yeah. Secondary school you do like a week's work experience. Yeah, you do a week's
work experience. So definitely if there's any field that you're interested in, you know,
go to that company, find someone that you can shadow. Even if it's just to try it out,
because you could do that week and again, as you say, like work out, it's not for you.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And did you guys do shadow like this week's work experience at your like
secondary schools or? No, no, it's not. This is not really a thing, especially where I'm
from. So I did. Yeah, I went into the Rogues Works. So it was civil. It was civil, but
it was a different area to what I'm in now. Do you know where mine was? It was a vet.
And not coming in. No, I'm here. Yeah, you worked out. I wasn't here. Even when I was
there, I described to them what I wanted to do. I think it was like work with animals
in South Africa. And they're like, why are you here? Why are you not at the zoo? I'm
like, this is my house, okay. My mom had to drive me. Yeah. Give me a bottle. Yeah, no,
we won't break. I might record that later and then split it and at the end, I've got
a story for you guys. That's pretty awesome. But yeah, so David, would you share that advice?
Is there definitely a shadow week? Yeah, that's a great idea to do a week's work experience
somewhere where you think you'd be interested in. I've been banging a lot about this, which
is a great idea too, to go in and do your experience. Yeah. And I think if there's
any degree that you want to pursue, universities normally have descriptions on every single
module throughout all the three to four years. So honestly, just go to the university websites,
check out some degrees, see if the modules excite you really. And all of them, it's normally
a paragraph to two paragraphs. There's a lot of university open days as well. They do.
That's really good. And what are they called? They're like fairs. Like I know Queens does
one anyway. And skills will usually take you to these, but if they don't, I think they
do do like week long ones and they are at the weekend if you don't get the chance to
go during the week with school. I mean, I'll plug University of Pretoria here, they have
something called EBIT Week. So it's engineering and built environment and IT. You go in for,
I think it's four days and you stay in some of the res's there and they take you through
each. You're going to have to explain what a residence is. Residence, so like uni halls
and they take you through each engineering field and then as well as IT and then the
built environment. So it would be architectural and mining. So definitely, definitely see
if local universities around have an introduction week. Okay, nice. Brilliant. Yeah, that's
great guys. Okay, well my advice is always be civil when looking at the mechanical. Not
like inspiring or groundbreaking because I've kind of reused that. Well, I liked when I
first messaged you guys about like, or like last night when I sent the clip to this, you
mentioned a title and it was like Enya and the dynamos. And I was like, dynamos? Yeah,
dynamos. That's some sort of, I think that's electrical engineering. I can make it work.
Yeah, you can make it work. Give me half an hour and like, you know, access to pain. Okay.
Well, you know, you might not always be a fan of the studies, but you got to get your
doubts in a row. I did like that. You did your research. Yeah. That was the one for
you. I'm letting the team down. I didn't realize this was a whole thing. She's already taken
the only civil joke. Floculator. That's like signing off. No one's going to know what a
flocculator is. So. Yeah, do you know what that is? No. But it's like flocculator. Like,
yeah. So see you later flocculator. Okay. And then you add the podcast there. Yeah.
And then you'll never have any more podcasts off. And you can never listen again. That's
it. And it's like, well, groundbreaking sign off. Yeah. Okay. Well, here, I'll do the sign
off now and then you can, you know, jump in at the end. Like, yeah, guys, I can sign off
the podcast. Yeah. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to plug the Instagram first and then.
Yeah, that's a good idea. Okay. Well, yeah. Brilliant guys. Thank you so much for coming
on. It was really great. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very insightful talk. And I hopefully people
like no more than they did when they like first started listening. But yeah, so thanks
for listening to carbon climates. If you follow us on Instagram at carbon underscore climates,
all links to our recordings and news about future episodes will be there. So yeah, guys,
see you next time. Bye. It's my time to shine. It's your time to shine. Good. See you later
flocculently. Brilliant. Brilliant.