Dr Mark McBride-Wright of InterEngineering, delivers ‘Inclusivity in Engineering’ lecture

Dr Mark McBride-Wright, Senior HSE Specialist at KBR and Co-founder and Chair of InterEngineering, delivered his lecture on ‘Inclusivity in Engineering’ to staff and students in the School of Engineering and Digital Arts on Wednesday 16th November, as part of a series of lectures tackling issues of Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity. Organized by the School’s EDI Rep, Catherine Butler, the lectures aim to demonstrate the School’s commitment to providing a learning environment which recognises and values people’s differences.

Mark opened the lecture by defining ‘diversity’ as a mix of individual characteristics and ‘inclusion’ as getting the mix to work well together. Mark explained the common barriers for underrepresented talent in the UK and called for positive action in addressing inequality in the workplace.

Mark drew attention to the leaky pipeline currently present in Engineering in the UK as illustrated in Professor John Perkins’ Review of Engineering Skills (2013)

Mark highlighted that diverse teams are linked to High Performance Organisations and result in improved performance, improved employer image, improved brand awareness, ultimately resulting in customers feeling more at home. Mark concluded the presentation by leaving the audience with a set of take-away tools for us to use in our everyday lives which include: having visible role models, receiving training on unconscious bias, respondong to unacceptable behaviour, having transparent career progression and flexible working and using suppliers who show commitment to diversity, to name but a few.