Blazing a trail for engineering excellence

Claire is now Head of Integrity and Inspection Solutions within the engineering consultancy business, at Uniper Technologies. Here, not only has she helped engineer a solution to address the need for remote access to engineers, but she’s also blazing a trail for others in the sector.

Claire now works in the same department that she started in, 11 years ago, as a graduate materials engineer:

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Uniper were already considering the risks, costs and the environmental impact associated with providing their engineering expertise in person. Claire and her team were involved in the implementation of Microsoft’s HoloLens device at Uniper. A pair of augmented reality smart glasses, the HoloLens device offers instant inspection of customer’s physical assets and issue consultation, without the need to send engineering experts to site.

An important part of our engineers’ job is to be present where we are needed. To do this, we need to travel and that takes time, it is unfriendly to the environment and increases the personal safety risks. So, we had a vision: ‘The Virtual Engineer’. This vision was to be able to have a person already on-site act as the eyes and ears of our Uniper Technical Specialists. This would enable us to deliver instant technical support, without the need to travel. With the aid of Microsoft’s HoloLens device, a pair of augmented reality smart glasses, integrated into a Hard Hat made by Trimble, we have be able to achieve our vision.

Achieving this vision required a combination of technical specialists from engineering and digital teams working together with our colleagues and customers in other locations.

Since the start of the COVID pandemic, the Virtual Engineer has really come into its own. It has allowed us to continue to deliver our amazing technical support at a time when travel was completely restricted. We wouldn’t have been able to do this, had we not had the vision several years earlier.

Claire’s role at Uniper is varied: as well as leading an engineering department with around 50 full-time employees and 100 contractors, she also defines the direction of the department, aligning it with the strategy of the overall business. 

Having an engineering degree is the solid foundation on which I have built my career so far. In my role as Department Head, I don’t do much hands-on technical work anymore, but I need to be able to understand, at a high level, all the technical work that is going on in the department. In my previous roles, I’ve been able to transfer the broader skills I learned during my engineering degree, for example problem solving and team building.

Alongside her role as Head of Integrity and Inspection solutions, Claire is also the Uniper UK ambassador for Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DE&I), and paves the way for others in engineering as a STEM ambassador:

When I did my degree, I was one of only three women on the course and I’m currently the only female department head at Uniper Technologies, which is the engineering services part of Uniper. Across the business as a whole, we have a number of female leaders, although there are far fewer female employees than male, which is not unusual in the energy sector. We recognise that Uniper and the engineering industry as a whole, still has work to do to become more diverse and inclusive and it’s something we’re looking at through our Diversity and Inclusion working group.

In my role, I’m actively working towards changing this and one of the ways I’m helping make a difference is by encouraging young people to consider studying STEM subjects and to raise awareness of the broad range of opportunities available to everybody across engineering and in the energy sector.