Evangelos Pastras

Senior energy storage consultant, DNV

Expertise

Construction, Project Management, Environmental Management

Location

United Kingdom

My highlights

Became a Chartered Engineer in 2022 (CEng)

Obtained an MBA during the Covid-19 lockdowns

COP26 participant under the WFEO Working Group on SDG13

A day in my life

As a project manager my responsibilities cover everything around time, cost, quality and health and safety for each project.

Building energy-related assets, whether generation, distribution or storage, is at the intersection between mechanical, electrical and civil engineering. It requires a lot of interface management and efficient communication.

Proactive planning of works onsite allows our construction teams to coordinate efficiently, optimise project delivery programmes and always adhere to H&S and construction best practice.

Effective management of multiple contractual packages can be challenging, however engineering builds the discipline required to deal with issues that inevitably occur during any construction project.

Seeing something you have worked really hard on, day in day out for months or even years at time, actually come to existence is unparalleled for me personally.

Which individual project or person inspired you to become a civil engineer?

My father introduced me to civil engineering from a young age.

I spent a lot of summers growing up shadowing him on construction sites, bit scared yet ecstatic, fascinated by the scale of things and the speed of transformation from one year to the next.

The effort and commitment of everyone involved to achieve a common goal that would provide actual value to a lot of people in the long term always felt like a very noble idea to me.

We asked Evangelos…

I would recommend a career in civil engineering because …

An engineer’s way of thinking and problem-solving skillset can be applied in any sector or industry.

Even though a PM’s remit is much broader than that of a specialised engineer, core engineering principles still apply to every aspect of my work.

These are some qualities that are instilled through civil engineering yet can be applied to anything, from academia to finance:

Planning ahead and programming of works,
progress monitoring and reporting to stakeholders,
quality management and constructability assessments, and
cost-saving through optimisation of processes, replicability and modularisation of design.

However, seeing something you have worked really hard on, day in day out for months or even years at time, actually come to existence is unparalleled for me personally.

This is what brought me into the construction sector and will keep me in the industry for the rest of my life.

Complete this phrase: I’m a civil engineer, but I’m also …

...an idealist.

What about being a civil engineer gets you out of bed each morning?

At the moment, getting us to net zero.

What’s one great thing that you love about civil engineering that you didn’t know until you started working in the industry?

The amount of work that there is to be done! Be that in traditional industry, energy or technology, civil engineers are involved in pretty much every aspect of our civilisations’ development, in one way or another!

Which civil engineering project (past or present) do you wish you’d worked on?

Dogger Bank Wind Farm – the challenge of offshore construction always excited me.

Dogger Bank will be one of the largest windfarms ever constructed, at around 130km from the northeast coast of England.

Name one civil engineering myth you’d like to bust.

An old mentor of mine firmly believed that civil engineers only make a name for themselves outside the industry when things go wrong.

That isn’t true – we just need to improve the way we communicate to non-engineers!

Has civil engineering helped you overcome any personal or professional challenges/difficulties?

Getting involved in the industry massively improved how I communicate to various stakeholders and taught me to adapt my communication style depending on the audience.

What are you doing to help fight against climate change?

Building flexible energy storage assets as part of Statera’s team
Advocating climate action and youth inclusion as part of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations Working Group (WFEO WG) on SDG13
Collaborating with the Greek Ministry of Environment on legislation proposals and COP27
Participating / organising capacity building events with the WFEO WG

Evangelos' career path

I was lucky enough to attend a half-American high school in Athens, Greece that then enabled me to get accepted at Imperial College in London for a MEng degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

After graduating from Imperial, I joined Natta Building Company as a site civil engineer and took part in large infrastructure and residential projects.

Being passionate about climate action, I came across an opportunity to construct two of the first 50MW BESS assets with METKA EGN as part of an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor.

Leaving METKA EGN to join Statera Energy allowed me to broaden my understanding of the energy market and related assets, and get involved in more stages of project development, eventually leading me to pursue an MBA during the Covid lockdowns.

I am now managing multiple multi-million-pound projects across the UK.