Hi, my name is KalaiChelvi Navaratnarajah.  

I am a writer, Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers and an internationally accredited civil and commercial mediator. I also love travel, reading, diving and writing and creating things.  

I grew up in Malaysia where my parents were working as expatriates. I had an extraordinary childhood that pretty much made me fearless. Having to grow up as an adult was an experience!  

I really enjoyed my Civil Engineering Degree and looking back, I can say I have had an amazing career as an engineer of many titles – heavy civil, structural, rail and most recent - infrastructure. I have had the honour to work on some landmark, critical infrastructure projects both in the UK and overseas. 

For a little more information about me you may wish to view my LinkedIn profile; 

http://www.linkedin.com/in/chelvi-nava-fistructe-ceng-4a10912b 

I believe engineering is in crisis in the UK. There are simply not enough engineers. Not enough people are coming into engineering, not enough people are staying in engineering. Within all of this, there is also the lack of diversity.  

Now that I have stepped away from delivering engineering projects, I have turned my focus to this problem.  

Engineering is an interesting, enjoyable and enabling career and I want to open its opportunities to everyone; ‘Engineering Everyone’ is the name I have given to this Passion Project.  

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I have distilled out 3 objectives; 

1. To raise public awareness that what engineers do is part of their everyday lives  

1. To inspire people from all walks of life to; become engineers, remain in the profession or return to the engineering profession 

1. To introduce easy concepts of engineering to the very young and through this, in time, organically achieving 1 and 2 

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I want engineering to become part of everyday language because engineering is in our everyday lives! After 38 years of practising as an engineer, teaching engineering at University, encouraging school placements and speaking at secondary school career days, I decided the understanding has to start much younger. This is the germinating seed of ‘Engineering Everyone – When they are Young’ series, aimed to start with very young children and will progress to older children of primary school age.   

As a Structural Engineer, I have started with ‘The Language of Structures’ as a first series. These books are based on lectures I created and gave to  Architecture undergraduates when I was a University Senior Lecturer; they are much simplified to be suitable for children or anyone who thinks something like engineering or structures is too mathematical or technical for them.  

I intend to add some vlogs to raise awareness of what engineers do to the general public and also produce some fun and supportive material for practising and budding engineers – we should and can be proud of what we do and have fun too whilst we go about the serious business of engineering!