A career at WCS is about so much more than engineering. We pride ourselves on creating a collaborative environment that delivers excellence to our clients and supports our employees to build truly rewarding careers.
To give you an insight into the WCS workplace, we asked our employees about the opportunities they’ve most enjoyed since joining the business. Today we’re talking to Konstantina Vasilopoulou MEng, MSc, GMICE, a Graduate Civil Engineer who joined the business in 2020.
What has been your most exciting opportunity at WCS?
I’ve been with the company for 18 months. Even though I’m a graduate without a lot of experience, in my first annual appraisal my manager gave the me the opportunity to lead my own project, the foundation of a substation. I saw the project from tender through to completion. It was definitely challenging but I had a lot of encouragement to step up – my manager really believed in me. Getting the photos of the completed project made me really proud – I’m really thrilled I got to do it.
WCS has such a broad range of projects so there’s a lot of opportunity to learn. So as well as a small project that I got to lead, I’ve also been involved in much bigger developments such as the Goodmayes station bridge. It’s giving me an insight into how a complex project works.
How are the teams structured?
There’s a clear hierarchy and teams are allocated by our director but I can talk to anyone if I need help – it’s a very supportive environment. And because the teams are different for each project I get to work with a lot of different people.
How does WCS support your career development?
Both my line manager and my director are very supportive of my training. WCS has an agreement with the Instituion of Civil Engineers so support me achieving my chartership. I have a mentor who works with me on my career development. At the same time, my director is really supportive of developing the careers of women in engineering. I’m a member of the Women in engineering society and attend their meetings.
What have you enjoyed most so far?
As I said earlier, seeing the photos of my own project when it was completed was a real high. I love the site visits and seeing the design work come to life. In a bigger company, I just wouldn’t get to do those design visits at my level. I get to be involved in a broad range of project delivery playing a smaller part in the huge projects and having more responsibility in the smaller ones.
What will the next 12 months bring you?
My personal goal is chartership. You need to demonstrate nine different attributes in the work that you do. The fact that WCS is so supportive in making sure I have the projects and challenges I need to demonstrate each one means I really hope to have attained or be close to attaining chartership in the next 12 months.
What does an average day look like?
There’s a lot of variety across design work, meetings and occasional site visits. And every now and again for railway projects, I’ll put in a night shift.