Orla Douds for My Early Chemical Engineering Career Path

Speaker: Orla Douds, Process Engineer, Assystem

Orla Douds: Hi, I'm Orla. I graduated from the University of Bath in 2017 with a master's in chemical engineering. I'm now a process engineer at Assystem, uh, which is an engineering consultancy focused on working towards net zero.

Orla Douds: I wasn't very sure what I wanted to do when I left uni. Uh, so during uni, I did a summer placement and a year placement to try and work out what I wanted to do. I did a summer one in R&D. Which felt a, I thought I wanted to be at the cutting edge design, but ultimately it didn't feel quite real enough, I didn't get to see the end result of my work. So I then did a year-long placement in food manufacturing at Appetito, which was a really fantastic experience. I got a lot of responsibility, I managed lots of small projects, it was really fantastic. But ultimately I decided that the work wasn't quite technical enough and what I really enjoyed was kind of designing solutions. So I decided to take a graduate job in engineering consultancy. I took my first job at Jacobs and I'm now working for Assytem. And what I really like about consultancy is you can kind of work across a range of sectors. So I've been doing work in sort of the nuclear and renewable energy sectors throughout my time in the consultancy. It's been really interesting. Um, I think that's what attracted me to the sector is just really interesting work, it's really technical design work, and you get to work with a nice range of people as well.

Orla Douds: So what I really enjoy about my work is that it's really interesting technical work. So I can work for clients across a range of companies and sectors, and they'll kind of give a problem to solve, a system to design. I really enjoy working on the problems that my job brings and kind of creating a solution and working out the best design. You know, it can involve making sure the system just meets its requirements, managing interfaces to make sure things don't clash in the solution you've created. Making sure that the system is safe, there's a lot of kind of process safety to design in engineering and I really enjoy that. I also get to work with a lot of interesting people. And I just think it's really interesting technical work, and that's what I enjoy about being a process engineer.

Orla Douds: I suppose the skills I use most often for my degree are really the kind of soft skills you learn during your degree, you know, in kind of process engineering, there's a lot of working with people, making sure you meet deadlines, kind of all those soft skills that you learn during uni. We do use a lot of that. In terms of, I suppose, the knowledge from university, it can really depend on the work you're doing. We do quite a lot of kind of unit sizing, um, pump sizing, line sizing, that's probably the most direct thing we use from uni, although it's worth saying we do often use software for that these days as well. Uh, but I just think having that underlying understanding of processes of the chemistry involved, of the physics involved, the engineering itself, and then having the correct soft skills to apply that, so making sure you can manage your own time, making sure, you know, if you're gonna meet deadlines and things, that's really important and kind of communicating well with others, because at the end of the day, a solutions no good if people don't understand it. So I think it's a mix of those soft skills. Knowing your base technical knowledge, but you can always read up on that as you go. It's just about having enough of a base to be able to use the knowledge, I think.

Orla Douds: So a typical day or week for me would usually include working on some deliverables and having a couple of meetings and chats with others about the work and deliverables I'm doing. Um, deliverables include things like maybe optioneering reports where you select a piece of technology or select the process that's right for your requirements, doing P&IDs or other drawings like BFDs, block flow diagrams to show the process we're gonna be doing, um, system design descriptions or other descriptions to describe the process or technology that we've selected and our designing essentially. Uh, things like requirements documents, so managing requirements is quite an important part of the job, making sure that you meet your requirements. It's really key in doing engineering design. Um, we might also do some process calculations, potentially to size pieces of equipment or maybe to assess risk or just to quantify something we're not too sure about yet. And deliverables can also include kind of hazard assessments, so you might do a HAZOP, but you might also just do a piece of work like an ATEX report to kind of assess the risk of something smaller, uh, and also maybe just other technical notes and pieces to describe systems and to describe risks that are happening. Uh, I'll also work with a lot of other people, so potentially other system owners to discuss interfaces between our systems. Uh, maybe I'll have a meeting to discuss the impact of the piece of work I'm doing the projects or on other systems, maybe to describe the impact it can have on the environment or safety with kind of key experts in these fields. We might also just have chats with people to ask their opinions or to check with the civils team that the design will kind of fit in the space we've got for the project. Um, but ultimately, a lot of the work is very much focused on delivering a technical deliverable and working with people to make that happen, I suppose.

Orla Douds: I suppose mostly I enjoy how technical and interesting the work I do is, you know, it kind of. It's just really interesting. I enjoy doing it. Um, I also quite enjoy, you know, I work on kind of projects that help meet net zero kind of renewables stuff, and I think it's really nice that I'm kind of contributing to a more sustainable future and kind of leaving things kind of large projects that are going to help the world and getting them done. I think that's really great. Um, I'm gonna have a real impact on the world, I suppose, but mostly, yeah, I just enjoy my work, I enjoy it, it's interesting, there's kind of lots of different interesting things to think about throughout the day. And I just find it really kind of fulfilling.

Orla Douds: I'm not sure exactly what the biggest challenge I found is, but certainly I used to really struggle with making sure I always asked questions, I'd sometimes be afraid that I might look stupid, you know. So one of the big things has been learning to always ask questions and actually that helps you do better. It means you look less stupid ultimately. Uh, I think overcoming that is just about gaining confidence, kind of learning that it's correct to ask questions, seeing, you know, really senior people ask questions that you may be too afraid to. I think it's really, you just have to go for it because that's what you have to do in engineering. Um, I also didn't really like calling people when I first started work when I was younger. Uh, so kind of getting over that, just doing lots of calls over time, I sort of got used to it and now I'm quite happy to call someone on the spot as well. Um, but yeah, I think the biggest challenges were really just kind of confidence space. So I think the big part of overcoming that is just knowing kind of everyone feels the way you do and you just sort of have to keep doing things until you become confident yourself. It's kind of the classic imposter syndrome thing, but the more you do it, the more you eventually feel like you belong there.

Orla Douds: So I suppose key things are first, I guess, read up on what kind of sectors you are interested in joining, um, and thinking about what kind of work you're interested in doing. Would you want to sit kind of in an office all day, which is what my job is, or would you rather be out and about on a site, kind of seeing things for yourself, um, and just sort of think about that in deciding your sector. I think then the next key thing is to make sure you kind of get work experience, so doing summer placements, year-long placements, maybe just kind of a week of work experience somewhere, you know, there's lots of things you can apply for on websites like Gradcracker and stuff, or you can just kind of email companies and ask if they'll let you come in. Uh, it's quite hard to get experience in consultancy, uh, especially in areas like nuclear where there's security issues involved. Um, but I think it's absolutely achievable. You can talk to people about their work, and I also would say getting experience in kind of any engineering really helpful. Like, I did work experience in R&D and food manufacturing, and now I'm working in engineering consultancy. Like, you don't have to do experience that's directly in the job you eventually want as long as it's near it, and it helps you get that work experience that you need to kind of make you more attractive to employers, and to help you learn more about yourself as well and what you're interested in. I think, you know, even things like normal jobs like, you know, I did a lot of waitressing and bar work at uni, and those are really kind of interesting things for helping you work on your people skills and just sort of get used to work and kind of social norms and things. I just think it's really important to have things on your CV that kind of help you stand out other than just your university grades.

Orla Douds: I mean there's a lot of kind of exciting development and opportunity in the field right now. It's a lot of change certainly in the world, um. If you just look at nuclear, there's a lot going on, so there's obviously kind of a lot of small modular design work happening in the UK right now. There's the Rolls-Royce reactor that's going to go ahead. There's kind of advanced modular reactors on the sidelines, which I think will go ahead one day as well. They use kind of things like lead-based technologies which are really interesting. Uh, Sizewell C's got the go-ahead and Hinkley's just being built, so there's a lot of kind of commissioning and kind of building work that's quite interesting and a bit different, which doesn't always come around in nuclear. And there's fusion opportunities as well. So obviously fusion's going through this massive acceleration with the building of STEP and, you know, within our lifetimes, we could see commercial fusion reactors being built in the UK. I think that's really exciting as well. It's all very novel engineering everywhere, and it's really interesting to assess these risks and just sort of make sure we find a more sustainable future. It's fantastic.

Orla Douds: So I'm a little biased but I think the best IChemE resource is the National Early Careers groups. Uh, I've been a part of the UK and Ireland group, which I believe was the first group, um, for a few years now. Um, I was previously vice chair. I'm currently the articles lead of the group. And it's just a really fantastic way to network, to meet people, to learn more about IChemE and other opportunities within IChemE to kind of keep on top of the webinars and articles that are coming out of the IChemE as well. There's kind of a lot of kind of continuous professional development that you can do with the IChemE. And being part of that group, I also think gives you a really great like young professional network. You can meet people in different careers, you learn a lot about the different careers available and what people do. I think it's a particularly great one for when you're at uni and you're feeling a bit like, scared and apprehensive about the world of work, but it's also great for students to kind of learn about what careers are available for them, what other young members are working in and what they might want to work on. Um, The Chemical Engineer is also a fantastic magazine. It's really interesting. It's got fun technical stories. They interview a lot of chemical engineering companies, it can also just be a good way to find out what companies there are in the UK. Uh, the early careers group also write articles in it, and we do things like kind of skills focused articles. Currently we're doing kind of a Starting Out series, so, we're looking at young engineers in different industries and asking them how they find their roles and kind of what they do in them so you can get a broader idea of that. I also quite like some of the IChemE training. Uh, there's kind of a list of different trainings you can do depending on your role. I've been on one or two with work, and they also have the free Sustainability Hub training, which is really good. So they've got things like life cycle analysis and general sustainability courses, which are really fantastic and a really great thing to do if you're kind of thinking more about getting into a career that has kind of a sustainable aspect, which most of them do these days. So, I think there's so much to IChemE, um, and then later on there's things like mentor match. So if your company doesn't offer mentors, you can find one through IChemE. There's a lot of really great resources and, you know, student membership's free, so there's no reason not to take advantage of it while you can.