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Mott MacDonald, a global engineering and management consultancy and one of our valued partners, recently invited our ambassadors to an Insight Day at their global headquarters in London. The event aimed to help young people develop key employability skills, gain insight into the working world and learn more about careers within the built environment sector.

The session included activities focused on building confidence and workplace skills, including:

• Interview skills
• Presentation skills
• Planning your travel effectively
• A hands-on LEGO building session
• Speed networking

The day also gave attendees the opportunity to meet professionals working in a range of roles across the organisation and learn more about the different career paths available within the company.

Luke Mason-Hobbs, Senior Social Value Consultant and Unit CSR Lead at Mott MacDonald, reflected on the importance of events like this:

“We welcomed two young women from The Girls’ Network, inviting them to learn key employability skills like presenting and networking effectively while also learning more about the varied career paths at Mott MacDonald from our young professionals.

We really value this sort of engagement because we want to demonstrate that the engineering sector welcomes people from all backgrounds, and to show that learning from a variety of degrees is applicable to all sorts of roles here.

I was certainly surprised that I ended up at an engineering consultancy after studying History at university, but I feel completely at home here. Our volunteers were particularly impressed by the engagement of the young people who joined us, and hope they enjoyed the experience and might consider a career in the built environment in the future!”

The Girls' Network Ambassador Dhurvisha said:

“It was wonderful meeting fellow ambassador Samantha, as well as talking to the team members from Tutors United.

We began with an icebreaker and learned about the different roles at Mott MacDonald, specifically social value consulting, which I didn't know was a field before.

During the LEGO activity, our group was commended for using a similar structure to ‘garden cities’, and it was fun to think about it through the lens of the ‘Time - Cost - Quality’ approach. We got to think from the perspective of a project manager, quantity surveyor, engineer and social value consultant.

We then did presentation skills, where we worked through how to start and end a presentation using impromptu topics.

It was a wonderful session hosted by Luke and Beatrix, including the speed networking, where we got to speak with people in various fields from systems engineering to flood risk management, so it definitely exposed us to the variety of roles available.

I found it incredibly valuable and, even though my background is not in engineering, coming to the event helped to show what other roles there are in engineering consultancies and pushed me out of my comfort zone when working with other people who I had not met before.”

The Girls' Network Ambassador Samantha said:

“My Insight Day at Mott MacDonald was both highly engaging and informative. I particularly enjoyed the hands-on challenge of designing a town using LEGO, which provided a unique perspective into the firm’s daily engineering and consultancy practices.

The day was rounded off with valuable sessions on presentation skills and speed networking with professionals, which really helped to build my confidence.”

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