EDITOR’S PICKS
Women in Engineering Day Q&A with Ovarro’s Barbara Hathaway
Ahead of InternationalWomen in Engineering Day which was on 23 June, Ovarro’s new technology leader for leakage solutions, Barbara Hathaway, discussed her career and gives words of advice for aspiring engineers
What led you to engineering?
My father was a physics teacher, who encouragedme andmy two older brothers to consider how things worked.We learnt to value knowledge and understanding - and it was fun! Bothmy brothers became engineers – one a civil engineer and the other inmining. There was never any suggestion that engineering was not for girls, so I decided to follow theminto the arena and study electronic engineering.
What is the best thing about being an engineer?
Engineers create solutions. Give an engineer a problemand they will help you solve it.
I love developing an important solution for a customer and seeing the satisfactionmy teamgets fromdelivering a successful project. Engineers really domake a difference and given that we are in the midst of an unprecedented global water crisis, their problem-solving skills are urgently required.
Tell us about your career path?
I graduated with a degree in electrical & electronic engineering fromPortsmouth University in the 1990s. I joined Primayer – a pioneering leakage technology company which was acquired by Ovarro in 2019 - 27 years ago, as a software engineer. After working as customer servicesmanager and technical services director, I became vice president of engineering in 2020. Now, in the newly-created role of technology leader for leakage solutions, I will be leading and developing Ovarro’s technology strategy and roadmap for leakage reduction products.
It is an exciting time to be working in leakage reduction - globally,more and more utilities are adopting data-powered tools, which are transforming network management, positively impacting leakage
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targets and environmental performance. Products that apply artificial intelligence andmachine learning, as well as cloud- based, as-a-servicemodels, are recent additions to the Ovarro portfolio.
Looking back, I found the transfer from engineering into business leadership challenging, in a good way. I have always been a problem-solver, but I now have to be careful not to dive too far into the detail, allowingmy teams to do themore technical work.
Women remain underrepresented in engineering. Are there enough opportunities?
Historically, what I’ve seen is a lack of female engineers to fill the opportunities that arise. Figures from2021 indicate that in the UK, only 16.5%of engineers are female, but I feel the landscape is changing. Girls are excelling at STEMsubjects in school. There are support andmentoring networks in place to encourage girls to study what they want.
Once in the workplace, options formore flexible working and better parental leave havemade a big difference, particularly in the last three years, which can only help and encourage women to join and stay within the sector. However, there remains an implicit gender bias in wider society which puts up barriers formany. Until this is tackled, we will not have true equality.
Have you encountered any gender bias in your career?
I amlucky to say I have not found being female has had an adverse effect onmy career. Colleagues have always treatedme as an equal. On occasions, when I’ve attended clientmeetings withmale colleagues, people have initially assumed theman occupies themore senior role. This kind of implicit bias still exists and is one of the key things we need to educate about.
I feel the Bechdel test – whichis an informal way to evaluate bias against women in films and othermedia - should be referred to more often. Untilmen and women are viewed in the same light then‘female engineers’will always exist. I wish for a
| July 2023 |
www.draintraderltd.com Barbara Hathaway
world where I was simply referred to as an ‘engineer’.
Do you seemorewomen in engineering nowthanwhen you started your career?
When I joined an engineering course at university, I was one of four women out of 100 students. Looking internally at Ovarro today, around 12%of our technical staff are female. It is a statistic I would like to improve.
We have an excellent female engineer in our Netherlands office, who is leading the development of our StreamWebscada software and we have other female engineers working at all levels within our SCADA and RTU teams. I seemore women in technical and engineering roles now and feel proud to see how far we have come since I startedmy career - but this is still a work in progress.
I amvery conscious that I amseen as a role model for younger engineers, so amalways ready and available to offer a helping hand.
Howwould you encourage young women and girls to take up engineering?
Go for it! Engineering is an incredibly satisfying career choice. Find yourself allies early in your career who will encourage your ambitions. Do not be limited by the words and attitudes of others.
At Ovarro, we’re always on the look-out for new talent. Engineering constantlymoves on and we need new ideas to be able to continue to innovate.Water is a critical sector to be part of – it is central to all our lives – and reducing leakage will put you at the very heart of global efforts to preserve supplies for future generations.
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