Being Pick Everard Spotlight: Kelvin Rose

What is your role at Pick Everard and what does it involve?

I am a senior civil engineer within the water team, a section of the civil engineering department at Pick Everard. I consider myself fortunate to be in an incredibly varied role and working on a great range of projects, but all of my work has one common theme – water.

I undertake project lead and technical design roles for design projects requiring the movement or treatment of water or sewage – including pumping stations, treatment works and pipelines.

In leading water design projects, I am the main point of contact for clients to convey their problems and their needs for which I manage teams of engineers to solve. Within technical design, I could be doing a range of tasks from calculations to check how much water a pipeline can move from point A to point B, to assembling 2D or 3D digital design drawings of a pumping station to show how it will be built, and from what materials.

What inspired you to pursue a career in engineering and specialise in water?

Engineering is all about understanding the science of materials and applying that understanding to real-world problems in order to meet basic human needs. The most basic human need is for clean water, and this is exactly the requirement that we want to help fulfil as water engineers at Pick Everard – whether it is helping to move clean drinking water to homes or treating sewage so that it returns to the water cycle of the natural environment in a safe condition.

I wanted to apply my interest in problem solving and understanding how things work to the most basic and important needs of society. As well as being rewarding to fulfil such an important role, engineers and water engineers will always be needed because of the essential need for water. For me, I like knowing that there will always be the need for my knowledge and experience in solving these real-world water-based problems.

Which project are you most proud of to date?

Every project is important to us as they are all contributing to the important human and environmental need for clean water. It is always a proud moment to see our projects gain planning permission, complete construction and start operating – whether it is a single water supply control valve or an entire sewage treatment works.

A recent project to be proud of is a large automatic water supply valve and pipeline, which enabled the water for the equivalent of 200,000 people to be moved more easily around the Midlands – to help safeguard wider resilience of the regional water supply system. I am also proud of our work in the design of a number of sewer network upgrades in the north-west to reduce sewage pollution being discharged to the local environment during severe storms.

How is climate change set to change your job?

Climate change has a range of possible implications for water engineering. The main possible consequences include reduction in the availability of water sources for drinking water supply, flooding of key components of water facilities (which are often located near bodies of water) and overloading of sewerage systems during storm events.

We are seeing some evidence for a range of possible climate change impacts already and much of what I do is directly and indirectly intended to counter these impacts. Pick Everard is currently engaged in projects such as building new reservoirs to secure water supplies during drought, building storm sewage storage to reduce sewage spills into the natural environment, and installing new pipelines to enable surplus water to reach areas in deficit.

What are you asked most often by clients?

The needs of our clients are as varied as the projects we help with and can change during project delivery. Ultimately, our clients work to meet important basic needs of society, so their requirements are always equally important.

Some of the most common questions relate to climate change. Questions like “what if…?”, “what other options are there?” and “how can we make changes later?” come up quite a lot. Our clients are always interested in seeing improvements – whether this is cost savings, reducing environmental impact or enabling design or construction to happen quicker. All of these thoughts are second nature to us as water engineers.

What is your advice for people looking to specialise in the same subject?

While some basic scientific knowledge and mathematical ability is important for engineering in general, perhaps the most important characteristics for water engineers are a thirst for knowledge, needing to ask “why” and the desire to solve problems with that knowledge.

Water engineering, and engineering generally, need more engineers to meet the challenges of the future. Water engineers are drawn from a huge range of different backgrounds into a range of different roles, and this diversity is increasing every day. With the increasing range of challenges our water systems face, now is the perfect time for people to become a water engineer and help meet society’s most important need.

What has been the most influential innovation in water engineering in recent years?

Digital technology has changed nearly every industry and profession around the world, and water engineering is no exception. While many of the basic principles of water and sewage engineering have remained unchanged for a long time, how we apply those principles are always evolving with ever-changing and competing pressures of cost, time and societal expectations.

Digital technology has, and is, transforming how all engineers deal with the balancing act of competing priorities. We can now do detailed 3D digital scans of existing public water facilities to make more efficient upgrades, robustly co-ordinate the placement of complex networks of utilities across large facilities and accurately visualise design proposals to help minimise their impact on the local community.

What is one thing that everyone should understand about water?

Clean water is taken very much for granted, considering how fundamental it is within our lives. Our water and sewerage systems may not be perfect but there is an incredible amount of effort and thought that goes into designing and operating these systems to be as cost effective and environmentally friendly as possible.

For every drop of water from your tap, there is probably someone responsible for getting it there who has pushed themselves through years of specialist education/training, who has been woken in the middle of the night to repair a pipe, or who has missed an evening with their loved ones to ensure a new water treatment plant gets built on time.