The ICE Connects: Women in Fellowship exhibition at One Great George Street encourages others to pursue the institution’s highest accolade.
A new exhibition celebrating the achievements of female ICE Fellows has launched today at One Great George Street (OGGS), London.
The ICE Connects: Women in Fellowship exhibition is part of the ICE’s efforts to encourage more women into civil and infrastructure engineering, as well as into leadership roles within the industry.
Using banner displays on the four pillars in the entrance hall, the exhibition will highlight the work and accomplishments of a diverse group of female civil engineers from around the globe.
The exhibition, which is open to the public, will run in two phases, each featuring a group of eight female ICE Fellows.
The first will run from 16 September until 8 November 2024. The second will run from 3 January until 28 February 2025.
Commenting on the exhibition, Jenny Green, ICE director of regions, said: “Civil and infrastructure engineers reach high levels of experience and knowledge at various stages of their careers.
We want to dispel some of the myths around ICE Fellowship to show that it is achievable earlier than some may think, and with a real breadth of professional skills and experience.”
Sharing inspirational Fellowship stories
Each banner in the exhibition features an ICE Fellow and a QR code that links to an individual story on the ICE website.
These inspirational stories, delivered in blog form, highlight how civil and infrastructure engineering offers many different career opportunities to all kinds of people.
Their stories demonstrate to young girls in particular how STEM-related careers are accessible and provide worthwhile challenges and significant rewards.
By describing their journeys to ICE Fellowship, they demonstrate that achieving the accolade isn’t as difficult as some may think.
Who's being featured?
Isabel Coman is director of engineering and asset strategy at Transport for London.
Isabel’s background includes work on several major projects including refurbishment of the Eastern Range at London King’s Cross and bid work for the Crossrail Joint Venture.
Isabel is also a member of the ICE Connects: Women in Fellowship focus group.
Read more about Isabel
Nicole Paterson is chief executive and accountable officer at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.
Nicole’s work involves overseeing a multidisciplinary team with responsibility for protection and enhancement of the environment at a national level.
Read more about Nicole
Smita Sawdadkar is a delivery lead at AtkinsRéalis.
Smita’s background includes delivery, from a Global Technology Centre located in India, of some of the UK’s most complex strategic road projects.
Read more about Smita
Meshi Taka is an independent consultant and project lead for Project Groundwater Northumbria, part of the Environment Agency’s Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme.
Read more about Meshi
Alice Chow is a director of strategic development with Arup Hong Kong.
Alice has practised as a bridge and structural engineer and has a wealth of experience of managing large multidisciplinary projects.
On a voluntary, basis, she has also used her civil engineering experience to provide infrastructure support to disaster relief projects.
Read more about Alice
Teresa Frost is an assistant quality manager with Cormac Solutions.
A highways engineer by background, she now looks after apprentice civil engineers in the south-west corner of England.
Read more about Teresa
Ciara Lappin is a technical director with the infrastructure team at Doran Consulting.
Ciara began her career in water/wastewater and now leads a team which delivers a wide range of infrastructure projects for the sports, leisure, education and transportation sectors.
Read more about Ciara
Ghada Mohamed El-Mahdy is a professor of structural engineering at the British University in Egypt.
Ghada pursued ICE Fellowship in order to achieve JBM accreditation for her university and to open the door for more Egyptian civil engineers to pursue post-graduate qualifications.
Read more about GhadaThe eight female ICE Fellows featured in the first stage of the ICE Connects: Women in Fellowship exhibition will feature in two sets of four.
Coman, Paterson, Sawdadkar and Taka will have their banners on display until 7 October, followed by Chow, Frost, Lappin and El-Mahdy, whose banners will be up from 7 October to 8 November.
The next set of eight women who are part of stage two of the exhibition will be shared in early 2025.
ICE Connects: Women in Fellowship
The exhibition forms part of the ICE Connects: Women in Fellowship initiative.
Fellowship is the highest grade of membership at the ICE. It recognises those who have made outstanding contributions to civil and infrastructure engineering and society.
The ICE Connects: Women in Fellowship initiative was set up in 2021 to drive the number of women in Fellowship and leadership.
It seeks to create more diversity across ICE Fellows and reflect the proportion of women in other ICE membership grades.
Since the initiative started, there’s been an increase in female Fellows of more than 45%.
“ICE Connects: Women in Fellowship also looks to address enduring misconceptions of who and what a ‘typical’ civil engineer at the highest level can be,” adds Jenny Green.
“Civil and infrastructure engineering are broad and exciting careers, with many ways to make a real difference,” Green said.
Aim for Fellowship
Green, who spearheaded the ICE Connects programme at the ICE, highlighted that the women featured in the exhibition are role models.
“These women are an inspiration, both to young women who should consider joining the profession, and to those already working in the industry to keep marking their achievements and aim for ICE Fellowship,” she said.
Green said the exhibition shows how diverse this career is, and how it’s evolving. She mentioned digitalisation and automation as transformative factors that require new ways of thinking.
“It is important that the profession attracts and retains the broadest talent to tackle the challenges facing the world today – this programme is about inclusivity and sharing the stories that people might not always have the opportunity to hear,” she said.
Encouraging others
The exhibition is the brainchild of Isabel Coman, a member of the ICE Connects: Women in Fellowship focus group, and one of the women featured in the exhibition.
She too sees the need to encourage the right talent to consider pursuing the accolade.
She said: “At a certain point in your career, ICE Fellowship becomes pretty much a prerequisite if you want to progress. It underlines that you have the right experience, knowledge and capabilities.
“We have a duty to reach out and encourage the right individuals to more actively pursue ICE Fellowship but because of misperceptions there are lots of people with the right levels of experience who are currently missing out.”
