Also online at: www.dijonline.co.uk 116 THE door industry journal winter 2022 Fire Doors, Safety & Security A Conversation with Amy Dowie: Uncovering the Unique Career of a Fire Safety Engineer and the Struggle of Encouraging Young Women into the Industry Since first getting involved with fire safety engineering while at university, Amy Dowie, of Warringtonfire has gone on to coordinate and manage a range of projects and developments across Australia. Now an award-winning engineer currently working on her master’s degree in Fire Protection Engineering, Amy discusses her experience in the industry thus far as a professional and as a woman in a field often overrepresented by men. She highlights some of the greatest barriers in encouraging young female engineers into the profession and tells us about her next chapter in life as a new mother. How did you find yourself in a career in fire safety engineering? I’ve always had a special interest in mathematics and the sciences. I remember my mother once gave me some science books as an Easter present and I was so happy! As I got a bit older, a pathway to engineering naturally unfolded for me during high school, and that led me to do my bachelor’s in engineering at the Australian National University, where I majored in electrical and biomedical engineering. I first became involved in the construction industry through a part-time job I had at university. There was a lot of construction going on at the time, so I helped represent students with disabilities and communicated their needs and concerns regarding access to and around the buildings. I moved into the fire protection industry towards the end of my undergraduate degree after seeing an advertisement for Warringtonfire, the company I now work for, and thought it sounded quite exciting. I began working for the company part-time and quickly decided once I had graduated, to stay on and pursue a career as a graduate fire safety engineer. What have been some of your most rewarding projects? One project that I’m particularly proud of involved undertaking a large combustible cladding audit. Despite being only 18 months into my career, I managed risk assessments on 106 buildings across 70 sites in just two months, all during the COVID pandemic. It was pretty intense balancing safe working practices on site, as it had to all be done in person, with sourcing the data we needed. This was critical to ensuring the occupants of these buildings, some of which were hospitals and schools, remained safe. As I was able to deliver such a large project on time and with a high level of client satisfaction, which in part, helped me win the Young Achiever of the Year Award from the Fire Protection Association of Australia, which I was very grateful to receive. Currently, I’m working on a fire safety plan for an electric vehicle (EV) car park. This has presented a technical challenge as there just isn’t much guidance for the EV industry yet, so we are trying to specify appropriate fire safety systems based on limited research.
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