London Power Tunnels Programme Manager Aleks Zefirova leads discussion at the women’s engineering society annual conference
Aleks Zefirova, Programme Manager for the London Power Tunnels (LPT) project, recently spoke at the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) annual conference as part of the panel for power and utilities. The conference is designed to celebrate WES’ work and share best practice amongst its female members who represent various organisations from the engineering industry.
‘Serving Society’ was the theme for this year which was particularly relevant for the LPT project which kicked off during the pandemic last year. Despite the challenge of Covid-19 the project started its major build to deliver vital infrastructure for the capital and remains on programme a year later.
The event also presented an ideal opportunity, as part of the serving society theme, for Aleks to share and answer questions on LPT’s pioneering STEM and careers programme with Connectr which launched in September helping some of London’s most deprived secondary schools.
The economic effects of the pandemic have caused gaps in social mobility to widen, and school closures have led to greater inequalities in accessing educational resources. Through the peak of the pandemic, just 23% of the most deprived schools had a suitable online platform in place to receive pupils’ work, compared to 60% of private schools. But, thanks to the programme so far over 17000 young pupils have been supported through an array of activities and volunteers from LPT which includes Aleks.
Aleks Zefirova, Programme Manager at National Grid said: “It was a pleasure to join the Power and Utilities Panel at the WES Annual Conference. I always thoroughly enjoy the opportunity to talk about the work that goes on within the London Power Tunnels project. Whether that is the adaptability of the team to work through the pandemic or the engagement we do with local schools through our partnership with Connectr – it’s great to be able to share this with people outside of our organisation.”
Elizabeth Donnelly, CEO, Women’s Engineering Society, said: “We were delighted Aleks Zefirova joined our Power and Utilities Panel at the 2021 WES Annual Conference. We chose the theme of Serving Society to showcase the amazing engineering work that has gone on behind the scenes during the pandemic and other emergencies. Aleks and her colleagues have really made a difference to the community in the last year and it was terrific that she shared this at our Conference.”