An ICE Fellow since 2016, Sulojana Shanmuganathan sees this membership grade as an ideal way to preserve civil engineering’s future.
At the time I applied to become an ICE Fellow, I was chief technical officer at Opus International, which is now WSP New Zealand.
I was already a Fellow of Engineering New Zealand and Engineers Australia.
For me, the ICE is a peak professional body.
It provided me with a lot of support and avenues to develop my knowledge and experience, particularly when I lived in the UK during the early part of my career.
I felt that becoming an ICE Fellow would be a significant milestone, and at the same time I also became a Fellow of the Institute of Structural Engineers.
Sponsors who know you
A challenge living in New Zealand at the time is there were few Fellows living locally.
Luckily for me, I still had colleagues and friends in the UK that I could reach out to as sponsors.
The situation is different almost a decade later.
There are more now, some of whom I’ve sponsored, and I’ve noticed that at events, I see more and more ICE Fellows who live here.
That’s important because you ideally have to know those who sponsor you – you can’t simply ask someone to sponsor you if you don’t know each other.
You need to allow time to develop the professional relationship.
Reflecting on years of experience
Putting together my application allowed me to reflect on some of the significant projects and pieces of work that I’d been involved in over the last 25-30 years. I enjoyed doing that.
I find myself reflecting very often.
Especially during the early stages of my career, living away from home in the UK, there were so many people at university and around me who were so very helpful.
I’d accompany them or they’d take me to evening talks. I remain profoundly grateful for the help that they gave me, because it was significant.
The people who help us along the way
That early mentoring and guidance really helped shape my thinking.
I spent a lot of time in the UK – I did a master’s degree at the University of Dundee followed by a PhD at Nottingham Trent University – and had to decide whether to stay in academia or go out into industry.
I chose the commercial route and that was tough because it was a wholly different culture.
Without those mentors in my background, it would’ve been difficult to make a difference.
The people who help you also give you the confidence that, with the right motivation and hard work, you can achieve anything you want to.
You can surpass the difficulties and maybe cross that mountain.
The right time
It’s important, at the right point in your career, to go for ICE Fellowship.
It’s recognition for the self, but it also enables you to get more involved with the ICE and provide help to the next generation coming through.
We need the profession to look after the profession, because the things we enjoy and experience are the seeds sown by the people and engineers who’ve gone before us.
We need to do the same for the future of our profession and being an ICE Fellow is a major step in doing that.
