I am a Structual Engineer, and have been working on building projects for the past 16 years. Just recently though [2011] I decied to try my hand at running my own engineering practice in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Avatar Engineering - building made simple.

I absolutely love being an engineer, and have thought long and hard about what can I do personally as a sole trader to help our industry thrive for the future. So, being acutely aware that many of us engineers see our lack of status and low profile as a barrier to the success for our profession, I decided to have a go at chipping away at this problem.

So far I have been able to advise and enthuse graduates beginning their careers, start writing a blog, and try my hand at crowd funding a cool engineering project.

In my spare time I also enjoy running, snowboarding, skateboarding, film making/editing, reading [philosophy/business/history of engineering/architecture] and playing the acoustic guitar.

Looking to the future:-

Creating a small collaborative engineering community to share work loads and the responsibility for training engineering graduates. Systemise it. Then use the template to help experienced engineers to start their own consultancies.