Helen Cumming
Published: Mon 6 Feb 2023
As an engineer with dyslexia and ADHD Helen had her concerns about the application process for Chartered Engineer (CEng). However, her interactions with the IET highlighted the support available to all engineers interested in professional registration.
Helen Cumming works as a Senior Weight Engineer for BAE Systems. Based in Glasgow, her team is responsible for the stability of naval ships. This is managed by correctly balancing their weight during the design process.
Currently, she’s working on a Hunter Class frigate; the Australian version of the Royal Navy’s Type 26 frigate.
“We have to make sure that the centre of gravity stays relatively close to where it belongs, regardless of what all the other engineers are doing to sabotage that,” she laughs. “This involves a lot of mathematical modelling on a three-dimensional model of the ship using vertical, longitudinal and transverse centres of gravity (VCG, LCG and TCG) to work out where everything should go.”
Helen Cumming CEng, Senior Weight Engineer at BAE Systems
Not your typical career path
Helen did not have what many would call a typical career in engineering. As a teenager, she had no idea what she wanted to do and ended up on a computer science degree course via the UCAS Clearing process.
This wasn’t for her and so she quickly transferred to an information and library studies course. “I loved books, so it seemed to be a sensible choice,” she shrugs. Upon graduation, she took a role as a document controller in the oil and gas industry, a sector she stayed in for the best part of a decade.
Over time Helen got fed up seeing so many equally talented people getting three times her salary so she decided to look into taking a more technical career path. At first, she planned to study CAD, but she eventually ended up on a mechanical engineering HNC course.
She began to expand her experience by working as a mechanical engineer in a wider variety of sectors with employers such as Soil Machine Dynamics, Pentair Technical Solutions and most recently BAE Systems.
With support from these employers, she continued to study while gaining real-world experience. This led to a first-class honours degree in mechanical engineering, a postgraduate certificate in defence simulation and modelling, and a path to her current role.
Helen’s journey to Chartered Engineer
As a student, Helen had been made aware of Professional Registration and the path towards Chartered Engineer (CEng) registration.
“I was told that it’s simply what you do as an engineer, and so I asked the institute I was with at the time for a mentor. Although there were many promises over the years they never appeared,” she says sadly. “So, I went for it alone, with no guidance, and unsurprisingly didn’t get it. It was a horrible experience, so I just left it behind and moved on.”
But Helen couldn’t drop the idea of becoming professionally registered. Although she’d spent her entire working life in the engineering sector, she considered being an engineer as her second career, having spent the first ten years in more of a support position. She felt it was important to “put a stamp on my knowledge and have my peers validate my skills”.
Support available to neurodiverse Professional Registration applicants
However, Helen was anxious about restarting the process due to the challenges she may face as a person with dyslexia, especially after having received a late diagnosis during the final year of her degree.
By this time Helen had joined the IET and she was able to quash some of these fears after becoming a member of the organisation’s neurodiversity focus group.
Created to look at the ways the IET could improve its accessibility for the neurodiverse, she met other engineers like her and learnt more about the support on offer.
“It’s been fantastic, as a group we’ve been able to put forward new ways that the IET could support us. Through this I’ve met a Professional Registration Advisor (PRA) who helped me with my application and discovered tools that have made the application process easier for me,” she says.
“Career Manager for example – this platform makes the application process so much more accessible and filling out your application is much easier than all those paper sheets I had to deal with the first time around.
“During my application, I was also diagnosed with ADHD and I believe the support I had helped me navigate the process in a way I could better understand. The PRA broke down each step and helped me understand how my skills related to each competency for example, while my peers kept me motivated and focused when I needed it.
“I learnt to view the application like a project, break it down into small chunks and set myself a time each week to sit down and do something – even if just for five minutes. It’s a great trick, especially for people with ADHD, and helped me make good use of my hyperfocus!”
The support continued through the interview process, with a mentor running through some ‘trial’ interviews to strengthen her confidence. Not long after her official interview, Helen got the call that she’d been awarded CEng professional registration.
“Those PRAs and mentors are worth their weight in gold” she enthuses. “It’s also great to meet and speak with other neurodiverse engineers who’ve achieved professional registration. Showing it can be done is really important and that’s why I’m sharing my story.
Advice to fellow neurodiverse engineers
“My advice to my neurodivergent peers is if you’re interested in professional registration just start by speaking to people.”
“They can help you translate the competencies into something you understand and can offer support and guidance. The best advice I had was to approach your application like a project. As engineers, we understand that structure and it makes the whole process more manageable if you break it down.”
“Take advantage of all the support the IET has to offer, such as mentors and PRAs, these guys are brilliant. The hardest thing can be asking for support, especially as many neurodivergent people spend years masking their differences and trying to pretend their brains work like everyone else’s.
Embrace your differences but understand that this support is available to everyone, not just the neurodivergent. If everyone else is taking advantage of it, why shouldn’t you?”.