Career Profiles: Duncan Hollis

My degree: I graduated from Exeter University with a Masters Degree in Civil Engineering in 2001.

My employer: I work for ARUP in their Bristol office. It is one of the largest engineering design consultants in the world with approximately 6500 employees.

My current job: I am involved in a new bypass project for Semington (South of Bath on the A350) on the design of two of several bridges. One is a single 12 metre span bridge over a brook, and the other is an aqueduct over the new road, which carries the Kennet and Avon Canal. The main bridge structure is being designed by structural engineers, and the foundations and piles are being designed by geotechnical engineers (they understand the engineering behaviour of soils and rocks). I shall be liasing with both structural and geotechnical engineers in order to complete a successful design.

My previous job: Previously, I worked as an 'Assistant Site Engineer' with a different company called Balfour Beatty, a leading global contractor with over 17,000 employees.

I was employed on the construction of the M6 Toll Motorway (formally the Birmingham Northern Relief Road), which is a joint venture between four contractors, costing £485 million. The new road will be the first toll motorway in the UK and is due for completion in September 2003. I was assigned to M42 section of the 43 kilometre long project.

My responsibilities as a site engineer were wide ranging. They included the "setting-out" of motorway bridges, which is a process where an engineer interprets construction drawings and lays out the positions where different elements of the structures are to be built. My duties also involved the supervision of the construction works, and I found myself responsible for a bridge only three weeks into my job, having had no previous experience of being on site. There is a steep learning curve in this job!

I then moved on to two existing bridges, which were to be extended by 24 metes in width to carry the additional lanes of the motorway. One bridge went over a road and the other over the Birmingham to Nuneaton railway line. Although similar above ground, the bridges had different types of foundation. The bridge over the road sat on concrete pads, whilst the bridge over the railway was supported on piles, which are columns extending down into the ground. The work for the latter was close to a live railway, so much of it had to be done under supervision from a Railtrack "Controller of Site Safety". If the work was thought to pose too great a risk, it was executed at night or at weekends when sections of the track could be closed.

My plans for the future: I will continue working towards professional status as a chartered engineer, after which I will be looking for work abroad, preferably in Australia.