National Engineering Day aims to make the UK’s engineers and engineering more visible. This year, the focus is on showcasing how engineering improves lives so it’s the perfect opportunity to get an insight into the working life of one of our water resources engineers, Andy Johnson.

Andy is a Chartered Civil Engineer, specialising in flood risk and drainage and is a passionate advocate for sustainable drainage design. Enhancing the amenity, biodiversity and quality of places through innovative and cost-effective drainage and flood risk solutions is not only beneficial for local residents and wildlife but also has the opportunity to offset some of the environmental impact of development. With such an important role, we ask Andy to share his experience and insight into the world of water resources:

What is your role at PJA?
Our water resources team delivers complex flood and drainage projects and are experts in delivering combined engineering, environmental and sustainable solutions to support developers, housebuilders and local authorities in understanding and coping with flood risk.

What’s your career path so far?
I came into engineering accidentally. After completing a degree in mathematics, I started as the postboy at Hanson Building Products and, after showing I had skills in AutoCAD and design, I started working in the drawing office.

Later I moved to RPS (formerly Burks Green), where I developed my skills in civil and structural engineering, completing a BEng and MEng part time while working on notable schemes such as the Drax Power Plant and Blackpool Tram Depot.

I became a bit of a drainage design specialist, which I developed further when moving south to Patrick Parsons (formerly Stilwell Partnership). I expanded into flood risk and sustainable drainage and quickly built up a strong workload and client base with delivery of good designs and strong technical solutions. During this time, I became a chartered engineer with the Institution of Civil Engineers and a certified European Engineer.

After nine good years at Parsons, I moved to PJA to shift slightly from the hard design and detail of civils projects to water management and a more strategy-based role.

I am an advisor to clients on sustainable and efficient drainage solutions, incorporating all elements of the water cycle, and a huge enthusiast for enhancing places through cleverly designed total water solutions rather than just looking at water as a problem to solve. The water team at PJA keep ahead of current hot topics, such as water neutrality, and changes in legislation and I have been pleased to assist in creating some information pieces for that and be able to offer sound advice to clients.

What’s the proudest moment in your career?
Recently my interest in research and general curiosity inspired me to produce several articles and pieces that I did mainly for my own knowledge, but also got quite a lot of traction online and good input from fellow professionals.

This led to being asked to write a piece for the New Civil Engineer, which was published in their online magazine. Sadly, it wasn’t selected for the print version, but I was still quite proud to be recognised and published, rather than just being another engineer in the field.

A close second to this would be my recent acceptance as a CEng reviewer in the Institution of Civil Engineers, in which I hope to assist and develop the next generation of engineers and show that routes to chartership can be achieved with a certain specialism (as I did with drainage design).

What are your project highlights?
The highlights for me are not really the prestige or size of a scheme, but the solution I developed for it and the problem I solved. There were many complex and interesting schemes and I had to think out of the box more times than not to make a system work. I developed great working relationships with clients and have been the go-to person on new schemes, which means a lot to me to be thought of a someone who “knows their stuff”.

What’s your advice for someone starting out in a career similar to yours?
It’s always difficult to know what you want to do with your life when just starting out. If I had known then what I know now, I would have chosen a career path rather than just falling into it by chance. But if I can give one piece of advice, it’s to want to know everything and be curious about things. If I see something online or in a project and I don’t know what it is, I go find out and it really does make you a more rounded engineer and person (plus I usually end up writing an article about it).

What do you do when you’re not working?
I am a proud and happy father to twin girls Amber & Mara, born in March, so that’s pretty much all I do outside of work now, apart from an occasional few hours on the PlayStation!

I am passionate about pollution and sustainability, so am also an ambassador for a charity called Stormwater Shepherds. They aim to target pollution in watercourses and rivers through action, expertise, and education. I help run watercourse clean-ups as well as offering my knowledge and experience into different research projects. Looking at different areas of stormwater management and promoting good design principles supported by my work output. I feel that the area of design and management of surface water is changing constantly and there is a huge opportunity to promote ways of design that have multiple benefits to multiple stakeholders.

How have you found working for PJA?
Having the support of the team, who genuinely want me to do work that I enjoy and build up the business around my strengths is fantastic. I like how all staff are involved in everything work and non-work related and are so enthused about extra-curricular activities like the wellbeing team, volunteer and social events and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. PJA appear to have the ethos that happy workers are better workers, and back it up with action. I am really enjoying it so far and excited to see how my career develops here in the future.

Get in touch with Andy: [email protected]

Find out more on our water resource services here

Sign up for more news from PJA here

Andy Johnson, Associate

Andy is a Chartered Civil Engineer, specialising in Flood Risk and Drainage. He is passionate about sustainable drainage design that enhances the amenity, biodiversity and quality of a site and is enthusiastic to find innovative solutions that are efficient and cost effective for clients.

He is also an accredited CPD presenter offering sessions related to flood risk and drainage to companies in the UK.