Mar

Mar's STORY

Performance Team Leader, FCC Environment

Performance Team Leader
FCC Environment

Mar has worked in the waste and recycling sector for the past 10 years, holding a number of different roles.

Initially working as an Environmental Technician, responsible for monitoring five closed landfill sites located between Kent and Essex for WRG (Waste Recycling Group), before moving to Allington Energy from Waste (EfW) to take up the role of Performance Engineer. During two years she was learning about the process and responsible to monitor the performance of the plant, managing and manipulating technical and commercial data. Six years ago, Mar was promoted to Performance Team Leader.

It is Mar’s responsibility to provide technical guidance for the operation of the Allington plant as well as being responsible for investigating any environmental concerns and production losses and implement improvement projects in these areas. She is also responsible for supervising contractors, mainly during planned outages. Speaking about what she enjoys most about her role, Mar said: “I love that I can make a big difference by bringing improvements to the plant, for example through controlling the bed quality, I helped achieve a significant £1.4 million cost saving for the company. Of course, you cannot have such a big impact every day. I really enjoy being out in the plant, if we’re facing an issue, I want to be there to see what it is, fresh information really helps to bring about potential solutions.”

During her time at Allington, Mar has held several positions: in 2018 she took a two-year break from her current role to support the outage team by becoming a Senior Authorised Person working in the planning process and delivering it in the Permit office, and then again in 2020 she worked as an Outage Coordinator to improve the process around the planned shutdown, this time supporting the wider team and working together with the Operational and Maintenance teams.

Mar is passionate about encouraging women to look for roles as engineers and has undertaken work to this end.

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I am often arranging site visits for people of all ages and backgrounds, be they professional, school children or from the University of the Third Age, to show that women work as engineers and to help remove the stereotype that engineering is for men. We have also had the opportunity to show waste industry professionals from South Korea around the plant, as well as giving a presentation to women working in the water treatment industry on the technical workings of the plant, giving us the opportunity to share knowledge across both boarders and sectors.

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The waste and recycling industry is a fantastic source of knowledge, and offers a really great range of roles, from safety to commercial, operational, mechanical and electrical with so many people to learn from. My advice to women looking to start out in engineering would be that the only barrier we put up are the ones we build ourselves, so don’t build them and go for it!

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