WILDGEESE: EMIGRANT BUSINESS LEADERS ON OPPORTUNITIES ABROAD:Dervilla Mitchell, Trustee and board member of Arup
WHILE THERE has been a long tradition of Irish emigrants working on British building sites, Dervilla Mitchell bucks a stereotype. The Dublin-born engineer, a building site veteran of some 30 years, has done her time in hard hats and more than left her mark on London’s landscape.
A board member of building firm Arup and the company’s most senior female engineer, she counts the construction of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 among her achievements.
If women on building sites are still out numbered by men, the statistics are a lot better than when Mitchell studied engineering in 1977. “In our year, there were four women and about 200 men,” she recalls of her University College Dublin class.
“I remember walking into the lecture theatre and stopping for a second and then just accepting that that’s the way it was.”
While she enjoyed the subjects at school, Mitchell says maths and physics were not her strongest points. “Even if you’re not really strong in these subjects, you can have a very good career – you don’t spend your whole life doing maths and physics once you qualify as an engineer.”
With a father an architect, she says structural engineering was a natural choice. “It was the idea that you would be involved in the creative process, designing new buildings and bridges, very tangible and real things in this world, that’s what appealed.”
Wrangling a summer job with Arup in Dublin during her second year, the company offered her a permanent role on graduation. As a rugby fan, her first assignment with the company proved a particular thrill. “I designed all the handrails and crush barriers at Lansdowne Road.
“It was in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster so safety in the stadium was kind of a new area. I took great pride in that,” she recalls.
Her first post as a resident engineer saw her back at UCD. Meeting her husband through work, his studies saw them move to Boston for two years before they relocated to London where Mitchell rejoined Arup.
Engineering work on shopping centres and schools followed, as did the birth of Mitchell’s three children. Juggling it all was “a challenge”, she admits.
“I had to be very clear with people about it and say, ‘well, I have other responsibilities’. If you are honest and straight with people, they respect and respond to that,” she says. “You just have to say to them, ‘this is where I draw the line. I will be leaving at five o’clock’.”
While children take their toll on sleep, she says the project that gave her the most sleepless nights was Portcullis House, a parliamentary building that sits above Westminster underground station and across from Big Ben on which she began work in the mid-1990s and which took four years to complete.
Part of a World Heritage site, the architect’s design required the structure to be prefabricated, transported to and assembled on-site, and then threaded down to the station below.
An architect’s vision, which she initially thought “too demanding” and which could have been difficult to inspire her team of engineers to embrace, served to demonstrate her strengths.
“I enjoy sitting at the interface between architects and engineers, maybe being the daughter of an architect helps. A lot of my job is about translating what is said but also what is not said. It’s about explaining why we would want to design it like that and build it like that. There’s never a right and wrong, it’s about translation.”
Is such diplomacy a particular strength in women? “I think women do tend to listen more. I don’t want to make a gross generalisation but I think there is a tendency that we can be more empathetic,” she says.
Her next major project was the £4 billion (€4.6 billion) Heathrow Terminal 5 where she was on site between 2000 and 2006 to lead work on the terminal buildings, control tower, the buildings’ services and acoustics for the largest construction project in Europe.
“We were brought together as a team and located at Heathrow with a view of the site so everyone knew from the outset it was about setting aside your own differences and focusing every day on what was right for the project.”
She says the collaborative environment suited her leadership style, making the project “not as lonely” as those where she has had sole responsibility for delivery.
Moving back to Arup’s London headquarters after six years proved a wrench but she says, “I still get a thrill when I walk through T5. You recall the challenges but also the people you worked with and the fantastic connection we made.”
Mitchell has since worked on Dublin’s Terminal 2, which brought her back to Dublin weekly.
“For the city of Dublin and the DAA [Dublin Airport Authority] they have a much admired building. I take great pride going in and out of Dublin and using T2 now,” she says of her visits home.
While she says the speed with which the recession hit in August 2008 was a shock, there are green shoots. “We’re seeing clients taking projects to planning now and we’re seeing investors from overseas interested in opportunities in the UK.”
This month, Mitchell was recognised as a Woman of Outstanding Achievement by the UKRC, a body that celebrates the contribution of women to science, engineering and technology. She is a passionate about encouraging women into these professions and ensuring there is equal opportunity for them to advance to the highest levels.
