Stephanie Smithers received a Travel Award to help fund a trip to Ecuador to work on jungle water projects.

Tell us a bit about your employer and current job role?

MWH is a global consultancy in water, environmental, wet infrastructure and energy services. It has over 6,500 employees across 197 offices worldwide. I am working with MWH as a senior civil engineer in wastewater treatment as a part of 4d - the joint venture between MWH and Costain helping to deliver Southern Water's AMP5 programme.

Why did you apply for the QUEST travel award?

I went to Ecuador 2009/2010 to work with Vozandes Community Development on jungle water projects for six months. During this time, I really enjoyed working with indigenous communities on small-scale water projects but found that it was just not enough time. I wanted to return to be able to continue to work in the communities with whom I had started to build relationships and to gain more experience of working in other cultures. During my first time in Ecuador, along with other colleagues, I had started to look at solutions to the wastewater treatment at Hospital Vozandes Oriente (a missionary hospital which sees 18,000 patients a year) and saw the opportunity to return to take this project forward.

What was the purpose of your trip and did you achieve this?

The purpose of my trip was to work as a part of the jungle water projects team within Vozandes Community Development, HCJB Global. I was to help with water projects (carrying out spring protections, building latrines and doing hygiene teaching) in indigenous Shuar communities which are isolated - only accessible by air or foot. I was able to do this in part - completing the projects that I had started during my first time in Ecuador but was unable to carry out projects in new communities due to project funding problems within Ecuador. Instead, when thwarted in new projects, I was able to visit communities to evaluate past projects carried out over the last five years. Evaluations enabled me to see the long-term impacts of engineering decisions and to learn a lot more about the Shuar people's attitude to water and sanitation projects.

I was able to progress the design of a wastewater treatment solution for the Hospital Vozandes Oriente, analysing the existing system and proposing solutions. I worked with a group of students from Calvin College in the USA who wish to take the project on as their final year project. They were also lucky enough to be granted a travel scholarship from their university to visit Ecuador for a week so I had the opportunity to develop a week of activities for them, showing them the hospital system and also introducing them to the work of the jungle water projects team in Ecuador. This was an amazing opportunity as I was able to enthuse a group of students about international development work and the practical difference that civil engineering can make in the world. It also meant that there were people to continue this work after I left Ecuador.

What did you learn about civil engineering while you were away?

More than anything I learnt about the challenges of doing civil engineering as a means to community development where the goal of a project is not just to develop a good technical solution that will work, but to work side by side with a community, helping them to improve their own health. I learnt that cultural suitability is key to everything that we do as engineers and that fully understanding the culture in which you work is key to the long-term success of a project. I was faced with questions such as; how do you design a water system which can survive more than a year in the jungle where there is no culture of maintenance or paying for services and where there are no shops, a place where, if your house falls down, you just build another one out of the things around you! I also learnt to appreciate my comfortable desk in the UK when I was trying to do 2km of levelling through the Amazonian jungle, in wellies and a skirt along a route that needed to be cleared with machetes as we went along, having to balance on fallen tree trunks and through multiple wasp swarms.

How do you think winning this award and travelling has helped/changed you?

Winning this award and being able to travel to and work in Ecuador has helped me to learn a lot about working cross-culturally and the challenges of doing so. I have faced and overcome some difficult challenges such as living and working in the jungle which has increased my confidence as I have often had to think on my feet and come up with solutions without the support networks and resources that I would have available to me in the UK. I have seen different ways of doing things - some good and some bad, which has led me to appreciate the good things in my own culture together with things that we could do better.

Do you think that your experience has helped your civil engineering career?

I think my experience has definitely helped my civil engineering career. In doing the civil engineering projects in Ecuador, I came across challenges that I would never have had in the UK. For example, having to fit all of the components for a project into a 2m long plane with a strict weight limit. I have had to develop my people skills when managing groups of community members constructing their own systems, speaking Spanish which was neither my nor their first language. I have also further seen the importance and difficulty of designing simple systems that everyone can understand.

What advice would you give to someone else who is thinking about applying for the Travel Award?

I would urge them to apply. Travelling and working in another country will provide you with so many challenges that you would never face in the UK which will stretch you and really test your abilities not only from a civil engineering perspective but in every facet of your life.