My 'Work Experience Week' begins

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Kicked off my “work experience week” this morning with a really inspiring visit to the award winning team at Alan White Design Ltd Design Ltd (AWD) civil engineering firm at Hill Street, Kilmarnock.

I heard from Managing Director Malachy Ryan about some of the amazing engineering projects they are involved with both here in Scotland, the UK, and on the International scene.

For example, here in Scotland, AWD were involved with the technically challenging design of a propping system for the building of the fabulous V&A museum of Design in Dundee. For this project the AWD team had to come up with a completely bespoke and flexible system that had to cope with the intricate building specification with multiple curved walls constructed from reinforced concrete.

While on the international scene, AWD designed a suspended access system for the iconic West Gate Bridge in Melbourne, Australia. Not only did the AWD design ensure a safe working environment at full bridge access, allowing the bridge to remain open to the 170,000 vehicles per day for the duration of the project - they even made sure the employee facility/mess areas had a fully functioning dedicated BBQ space!

And if all of the above wasn’t enough to impress me, Malachy then went on to tell me how AWD are helping to inspire the next generation of engineers by getting involved with primary school STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, and Mathematics) projects; sponsoring the girls football team at Gargieston Primary School & Nursery; official sponsor of Kilmarnock Football Club; and running next month’s Roon The Toon 10K in aid of Hillhouse charity.

Thanks to Malachy and the rest of the AWD team for such an enjoyable visit.

I am also going to take Malachy’s favourite Voltaire quote with me back to Westminster: "No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."

P.S. If you have a passion for civil engineering then check out the AWD website (www.alanwhitedesign.com) for more details as AWD are always on the lookout for new and enthusiastic talent to join their team.