INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE POWERED BY THE DCA
INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE POWERED BY THE DCA
The data centre
industry and me –
Choosing a career in data centres
The DCA’s role is to work with the data centre sector, supporting
key areas of concern for the industry. New talent entering the
industry is consistently raised by the DCA community. In this piece,
we hear from Beth Whitehead, Associate Sustainability Engineer
at Operational Intelligence, about her journey into the industry.
My route into the data centre
industry was not a direct one,
but rather one of serendipity.
I grew up in the countryside between
Reading and Henley and attended a
local primary school and comprehensive.
I studied for my A-levels in Maths,
Physics and Chemistry at a tertiary
college in Henley. I had always loved
Maths and Physics, and spent my
childhood playing with Lego.
Two key factors led me into engineering:
the first was a week-long course aimed at
getting girls interested in engineering; the
second was my physics teacher who told
my parents engineering was not a career
for girls. After that, my mind was made up.
To those that think sexism doesn’t exist
in the 20th century, you are far wrong.
The problem is it is so ingrained in our
subconscious that we don’t even realise
we have been conditioned.
There is a wealth of evidence to show
that by the age of five, the careers
available to a gender (male or female)
are greatly reduced because of how
they are portrayed within society –
children’s books show builders as men
and teachers as women. In addition, our
focus on girls is how they should be kind
and caring and we praise them to death.
Once the praise is removed, girls begin
to believe they are inherently bad unless
told otherwise and in comes the imposter
phenomenon. A few of us slip through
the net, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t
subjected to the same conditioning.
However, I digress. After completing
my A-levels I went to Cardiff University
where I got a first-class degree in civil
engineering with an MEng in design
and management. During my degree, I
did a number of summer placements to
meet the financial shortfall created by
the abolition of grants and introduction
of tuition fees, and of course to gain
experience. In my third year, I completed
a sandwich year with Arup as a structural
engineer and suddenly the rest of my
degree became a lot easier.
Learning really does need both
theoretical and practical elements to be
effective. I will never forget the first time
I went on site and saw the reinforcement
mesh for a slab set out. I was truly baffled.
What on earth was it? I had only ever
drawn neat sections through beams with
circles for the rebar. I had never thought
about what this actually translated to in
the physical world. Once I’d joined these
dots, it all made so much more sense.
After my placement, Arup sponsored me
for the final years of my degree and when I
graduated in 2003, I started as a graduate
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