Ryan Collins

I'm Ryan, I am a fire engineer and currently based in Edinburgh.

Most of my time at work is spent reviewing designs for buildings and the built environment. I work alongside architects and engineers of other disciplines to make sure that we can design buildings that are safe and fun for people to live and work in.

A typical day for me is varied, no two days are the same.

I spend some of my days sitting and talking in meetings to clients and design teams.

I can also spend large portions of my days writing reports and technical notes, making engineering judgments on how buildings should be designed and how we can convey that information to clients and stakeholders to make sure everyone in the process of designing buildings is happy and satisfied, that what we're doing is reasonable and safe and meets all the objectives of the project.

So internally, I work with a small group of fire engineers locally in our Edinburgh office. And in-house, we like to get around a table together and brainstorm ideas when we have difficult problems. It's good to get different opinions from different engineers in the team.

On a wider scale, we have offices around the country where we collaborate throughout different projects and working with people in different offices to get different perspectives.

And then on an even bigger scale, we're working on projects across the country with design teams, with engineers from other companies and different disciplines. And this can take you completely up and down the country and sometimes even around the world.

The best thing about my job is the fact that it's sometimes difficult and you have to think and problem solve.

One of the things I do enjoy the most is having to sit and actually think through a problem. Fire safety and being a fire safety engineer, it's very critical that you get things right. It's quite a high pressure environment.

So being confident in your technical abilities and being able to think through a problem from start to end, and make sure you're really happy with your approach.

There's often maths involved, which might put some people off, but once you can see the bigger picture and define an approach of how you want to tackle the problem in front of you and you come up with an engineered solution, as we call it, it's very satisfying.

The hardest part about my job is as a fire engineer, it's you're often working on a lot of jobs at once. And it can get quite high stress in some cases when deadlines are tight, people want stuff delivered fast and you've got to manage people.

That's the, there's the people side of my job. So it's not just technical, it's making sure that you can communicate with clients and make sure everyone knows what you're doing, when they're going to get your deliverables and, and just making sure that everyone is happy.

So I originally did a civil engineering undergraduate degree and during that time I found out about fire safety engineering.

I ended up doing a final year research project on fire safety and then I got put in contact with some people who work at different firms and I found out about what the role of a fire engineer is and piecing together my interest in the built environment, sustainability, safety, I thought it was a natural way into being a fire safety engineer.

So at school, I was very interested in Maths and Physics, and that naturally led me into having an interest in engineering.

I think if you're keen on the built environment and really want to understand how the buildings that you visit and sit in class and work in every single day, how they really work, being an engineer, being a fire safety engineer, you get a really good insight into actually how the skeleton of a building and all the bits behind the scenes that you don't often see just being in a building, how they actually work, how they're built, how they're maintained, and how they've been designed with the person who's using the building in mind.

My job affects the world around us in many different ways. I mean, the obvious answer is that we're protecting people and the environment. We're making sure that everyone is safe in the buildings that they live, work, sleep and play in if you like.

But one aspect of my job that often gets overlooked is the sustainable aspect. We don't want fires. Fires aren't great for the environment in terms of climate change and big large-scale fires.

So we're trying to save lives on the one hand, but we're also trying to eliminate the side effects of bad sustainability, making sure buildings are future-proofed so that we can ensure the safety throughout the whole life cycle of a building.

The moment in my career I'll never forget is a few years after I became a fire engineer.

I took a personal decision to actually go back to university to further my education. So after my undergraduate degree in civil engineering, I went back to do another year at university to do a master's specifically in fire science.

And in the role that I have, that is really fundamental to solidify my understanding of the technical assumptions and approaches that I use day to day. So that year out really, you know, cemented my knowledge.

And when I returned to work, I was much more confident in applying technical judgment, engineering decisions. And that not only brought value to my clients, but also brought value to my technical skills and my future career ahead of me.

When I was younger, I was always sort of of the opinion that things will work themselves out, but you have to be really interested and confident in what you want to do and just go and get it. There's so much opportunity out there to do what you want to do.

And, you know, before I started working, I wasn't really aware of how many different disciplines there were. In the sort of engineering remit, there's so many different stakeholders and people, members of the design team that I work with that I was just not aware of.

So don't ever feel like there's not a niche that doesn't fit what you're interested in. There's always going to be something that really suits your skillset and the areas you excel in that makes you want to get up out of bed every morning and go to work and deliver something good for people, you know, make a positive change in the world.