Transcript

BARBARA

There's been two periods in my life when I worked as a consultant. One was prior to the career break, when I was a consultant in a forensics engineering consultancy. And the second has been since the career break, where I've been engaged with an expert engineering company in Glasgow. Now I've worked occasionally for them. It's very interesting work. It's very rewarding work. And it's financially great, when you have it.

But it's not consistent from that point of view. And quite often the role of a consultant would involve travel, which they know I can't do. So it's been one of these things that I will probably go back to in the future a bit more, once my children finish school. But it's good. I enjoy it. I've met some very interesting people and have a nice network of contacts through the consultancy work that I've done for the expert engineering company.

My consultancy work has come about, because I followed up with one contact that I'd had from previous employment. And I emailed them, and sent them my current CV, and they shared that with colleagues. And then I was approached on a few occasions to do some work for the company that they are now with. So it really was by keeping up with my network of previous contacts from employment that that came about.

It can be flexible. It is very interesting work. It can be financially great, while you have it. But you have to offset that with the fact that it is patches of work. It's not consistent. It's not something you're going to necessarily have all the time. You can be taken on for a couple of months while there's a big project going on, but at the end of that couple of months you're not there anymore. So it's difficult to manage from that point of view. And I've actually found it easier with my academic jobs and doing some consultancy as part of that, rather than relying on it full-time for what I'm doing at the moment.

Well, my field of consultancy is based on my experience from materials engineering and materials research. So when I have worked in forensic engineering that has been materials failure. Health and safety, industrial accidents, any of those failures come under what I would look at. I've also, within the consultancy that I've been involved with at the moment, worked on nuclear power plant arbitrations. I've been going on specific aspects of that relating to mechanical engineering. And again, some specific things relating to process engineering, which should come into my area of knowledge base from my mechanical engineering background.

Initially, I would let people know my skills through my CV going to a consultancy. It's then on their website, and people who have specific things that they need looked at can see the area of expertise that is there, and then I'd be contacted if need be.