HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports on the first half of an IHEEM ‘Diversity and Equality’ roundtable held in early November at the London offices of Eta Projects, at which participants discussed topics including encouraging more people from diverse genders and black and ethnic minorities into the sector, ‘alternative routes’ into healthcare engineering, and some of the workplace experiences – good and bad – of female engineers in a still largely male-dominated sector. February’s HEJ will report on the discussion’s second half.
Improving the diversity of the healthcare engineering and estate management workforce by encouraging not only more young women, but also individuals from different genders and a black and ethnic minority (BAME) backgrounds, to pursue a career in the field, has been a longstanding IHEEM goal, and was one of the ‘Five Key Themes’ set out by current CEO, Pete Sellars during his Presidency. The importance that the Institute attaches to the subject was reflected at October’s Healthcare Estates 2019, when a dedicated afternoon session on the conference’s first day saw a range of speakers – many of them women, and from backgrounds including healthcare engineering, consulting engineering, and Police Scotland – discuss both the challenges and the opportunities for different genders and those from a BAME background working in the sector. During the session, delegates were encouraged to put questions and comments into a ‘Comments’ box, with the promise that they would be addressed during a subsequent forum. That forum was a roundtable meeting held after the show on 8 November at the London offices of consulting engineers, Eta Projects, courtesy of director, Kim Shelley, CIPD, MIET, AMIHEEM, MWES, a member of IHEEM’s Diversity & Inclusion Working Group. The participants were:
Own careers and current role
The discussion began with the participants introducing themselves, by giving a little information on their own careers and current role. Kim Shelley, a director at Eta Projects, explained that she has worked for the consulting engineering firm for the past 12 years, and that her principal responsibilities today are CRM, finance, and HR. Trish Marchant, meanwhile, is Senior engineer at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, where she is in overall charge of mechanical and electrical infrastructure for the whole site, with a team of a nine engineers. She was previously Energy manager at Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham, Kent, and, before that, worked as an engineer in the water industry. A Chartered Engineer, she holds an Electrical Engineering degree, and has a range of other qualifications in areas including civil engineering and production engineering.
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