Walking Thoughts

  Referring to Donald Trump’s the United States of President of America, ignorance of climate change a learning friend of mine commented; “If the top tier of global human leadership so clearly doesn’t comprehend even the basics of the challenges we face, how are those tasked with delivering solutions ever going to succeed? Resources are being undermined or withdrawn simply because the leadership doesn’t understand what they do.” The answer is that we must succeed in spite of them. Engineers, scientists -ists , technicians, construction professionals, brilliant minds, experts in computing AI and brilliant communicators must work together to limit the damage that the climate crisis is causing. Yes, Ignorant  leadership Will impact available resources of all kinds. But only a bad workman blames his tools . And every engineer, site manager And technician I have ever known has always found ways of relocating a resource to where it’s truly needed. PhD’s completed outside of laborato...

  Professional Competence, Social Contracts, and the Quiet Erosion of Agency As a professional engineer, I invest deliberately in the services that enable me to operate at the highest level of competence for my employers, clients, and society. Professional status is not conferred solely by pre- and post-nominal designations, although I hold them with pride: Doctorate, Chartered Engineer, and Member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers. It is equally expressed through attitude, behaviours, and the choices we make about how we live and work. Over a career of 30 years, I have worked alongside many entrepreneurial and flexible professionals. They have consistently shared certain qualities: resilience, creativity, accountability, and an ability to see opportunity where others see inconvenience. These are the same values I was raised with, and they remain central to how I approach both my career and my responsibilities as a parent. For many years, the largest proportion of my persona...

  As a professional engineer I pay for services that allow me to perform to my highest competency for my employers and clients. My professional status is denoted not only in my pre-and post nominal Designations- Dr For my PhD and CEng As a charted engineer, and MIChemE As a charted chemical engineer, but also bye my attitude and behaviours . Over the past 30 years, I have found many entrepreneur and flexible professionals To work with. All of them are hard-working and creative people. In them, I see the qualities I was raised in. As a parent with a commitment to my professional career, The majority of that spend Has been on childcare. For the first five years half of my take-home salary, went on just paying the nursery let alone all the services I needed around that situation. And this I facilitated by selling up and moving to a much cheaper home in a much cheaper area. And by luck, or skill, I angain encountered brilliant entrepreneurial, creative professionals making it work. A b...

  Employment rights for people with caring responsibilities: protection by association In today’s workforce, many employees balance their professional role with significant caring responsibilities, including caring for a disabled child. UK employment law offers important protections for these workers, not only because they are carers, but because of their association with a disabled person. At the heart of this protection is the  Equality Act 2010 . While “carer” is not itself a protected characteristic, the Act expressly protects employees from  discrimination by association . This means an employee must not be treated less favourably because they are connected to someone with a protected characteristic, such as disability. The leading case of  Coleman v Attridge Law  established that parents of disabled children are protected even though they are not disabled themselves. In 2008 a British woman won a landmark legal ruling which gives carers the same right agai...

  After spending 178 days aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Ron Garan returned to Earth carrying something far heavier than space equipment or mission data. He returned with a transformed understanding of humanity itself. From orbit, Earth doesn’t look like a collection of countries, borders, or competing interests. It appears as a single, radiant blue sphere suspended in darkness. No lines divide continents. No flags mark territory. From 250 miles above the surface, every human conflict suddenly looks small — and every human connection looks unavoidable. Garan described watching lightning storms crackle across entire continents, auroras ripple like living curtains over the poles, and city lights glow softly against the planet’s night side. What struck him most wasn’t Earth’s power — it was its fragility. The atmosphere protecting all life appeared as a paper-thin blue halo, barely visible, yet responsible for everything that breathes, grows, and survives. That view...

  It’s 2009 and I’m 14 and I’m crying Not really sure where I am, but I’m holding the hand of my best friend Sam In the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood The air is clean and the walls are that not grey but green  and the lights are so bright they could burn a hole through the seam of my jeans  and my phone is buzzing in the pocket. My mom is asking me if I remembered my keys cause she’s closing the door and she needs to lock it  but I can’t tell my mom where I’ve gone. I can’t tell anyone at all.  You see my best friend Sam was raped by a man that we knew because he worked in the after School program  and he held her down with her text books beside her and he covered her mouth and then he …came …inside her  so now I’m with Sam at the place with a plan waiting for the results of a medical exam  and she’s praying she doesn’t need an abortion as she couldn’t afford it and her parents would like totally kill her .  It’s 2002 and my family jus...

  The quiet defiance of Dr Torill Bigg There is a certain kind of heroism that rarely attracts headlines. It does not shout, posture or seek validation. It works steadily, often invisibly, through systems most people only notice when they fail. Dr Torill Bigg’s career — and life — belong squarely in that tradition. A chartered engineer and chartered member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, Bigg holds a PhD in wastewater engineering from Cranfield University, a field whose very name hints at society’s ambivalence towards it. Wastewater is what we flush away, mentally and physically. Yet it is also where public health, environmental protection and climate resilience quietly converge. To work in this space is to accept responsibility for the unglamorous foundations of civilisation — and to understand that progress is often measured not in spectacle but in prevention. Bigg’s academic and professional credentials are formidable. She is the author of multiple peer-reviewed papers...

  Ballasted clarification systems use a dense material to intensify biological or chemical floc formations and dramatically improve the settling of suspended solids in water. Faster, settling leads to smaller clarifies and so smaller footprints. Ballasted clarification technique has been applied where very low phosphorous limits are required.  down to 0.04 mg/L. CoMag P removal  refers to the  CoMag system , a wastewater treatment technology from  Evoqua Water Technologies  (now part of Xylem) that uses magnetite (a dense iron ore) to efficiently remove phosphorus (P) and other contaminants, achieving much faster solids settling for smaller, more cost-effective treatment plants, often meeting stringent environmental standards . The process involves adding a coagulant, then magnetite to ballast the floc, and a polymer to bind it, allowing for rapid settling and magnetic recovery of the magnetite for reuse, making it a sustainable solution for tertiary treatm...

  January is always hard. But it doesn’t have to be.  Some years it stretches well beyond its calendar days and lodges itself in memory as a season rather than a month.  This January has been going on for about 100 days already. And bad Januaries (is that the plural? …I’ll stick with it) tend to dominate my memory of the month.  Looking back, I’ve noticed a pattern. The Januaries I remember most negatively were the ones where I was largely reacting.   There was the January that I buried my mother and the January in which I succumbed to postnatal depression.   Circumstances took the lead, decisions were deferred, and I found myself in response mode rather than choice mode. Those months felt heavy not only because they were difficult, but because they felt   out of my hands . Good Januaries were different. They were marked by agency. By deciding something. Finishing something that required persistence. Starting something that involved uncertainty. Making...

 Dr Bigg CEng Mother Engineer Homeowner Survivor Author