How would someone describe what you do for a living? We asked our team of transport planners, engineers and place makers how their job roles get described by their nearest and dearest. The answers may make you smile:
“My family describe my job as ‘drawing round different sized mugs’ – I design roundabouts”
Rob Howe, Associate, Transport Planning
“Some people’s description/understanding of my profession is limited to ‘putting soil into tubs’. There’s much more to it than that!”
Charlotte Smith, Ground Engineering and Contaminated Land Associate
“A plumber of poo or poo engineer – they like to omit the flood risk bit!!!”
Andrea Nelmes, Principal Flood Risk and Drainage Engineer
“My mother-in-law thinks I have it in my power to fix the potholes in her road!”
Phil Jones, Chairman
“My family have often joked that I operate the stop and go signs at roadworks…”
Nigel Millington, Joint Managing Director
“I’ve been told my job is a “Google Maps expert”!”
Lucy Smith, Senior Consultant, Transport Planning
“Do you sell bus tickets? Playing on google maps all day. Assuming I’ve worked on every development ever.”
Lucy Briggs, Senior Consultant, Transport Planning
“Not sure it makes me smile… but apparently I spend my day deliberately causing traffic jams just to annoy my friends and family, and every transport issue is obviously my fault”
John Myatt, Associate Director, Transport Planning
“My job has always been described as from my wife and friends:
Drainage – ‘Designing poo pipes and making water flow downhill – how hard can it be’.
Highway design – ‘drawing two straight lines on a piece of paper with the occasional circle’”
Sam Williams, Director
“As a GIS specialist I work with a range of disciplines and data types, when I was involved with a large highway drainage project, rationalising and improving layers and layers of historic drainage data, my friends would ask if I was still cleaning the drains.”
Brian Norman, GIS Manager
“‘Eco warrior’, ‘Geography Student’, ‘People that put all those cycle lanes in’… I’ve even been accused once of wishing death upon an attendee at a public consultation event!”
Ben Coleman, Associate, Placemaking
“When I say I’m a transport planner I’m often asked if I’m responsible for speed humps that have annoyed the particular person who I’m talking with”
Gavin Coupe, Associate Director, Transport Planning
“I asked my 8 year old son and he said ‘he looks at roads to try and make them better by trying to stop the traffic'”
Chris Stack, Associate Director, Transport Planning
“Some people do think I’m responsible for every section of roadworks they come across although this is nothing to do with what I actually do as a job.”
Kay Nicholls, Associate, Transport Planning
“That I colour in all day and to make sure I ‘stay in the lines'”
Julie Cadwallader, Marketing and Graphic Design Manager
So what do we actually do? We work together to create better places through great design.
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