RYAN STEWART
Ryan is 26 and a Graduate Mechanical Engineer for Technical and Consultancy Services in Aberdeen

I’m from Lossiemouth in the north-east of Scotland and would describe myself a typical engineer growing up, playing with lots of Lego. I was fascinated with heavy equipment and mathematical based puzzles. I lived near to the RAF airbase and loved to think about how things worked. I remember as a kid asking ‘why’ a lot.

I was fortunate enough to be part of a scholarship scheme with Petrofac in my 2nd, 3rd and 4th year at University studying Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. I interned at the Petrofac office in Aberdeen. Starting in November 2015 I spent a year and a half at the Petrofac Academy in Sharjah before coming back in 2017 to a separate graduate scheme in Aberdeen.

I had a fantastic time in the UAE. I had never interacted with so many different cultures. It opened my eyes: it’s the most amazing country and the people were great. I would go back to Dubai in a heartbeat. I learnt it’s very different to managing an asset in the North Sea. In UAE generally you build a facility in the middle of the desert. The biggest project I was involved with was worth US$4 billion. The engineering was not the only challenge; I didn’t appreciate the logistics involved. You had to think about the infrastructure you were going to need for thousands of people living in the middle of the desert: basic things like how you were going to get adequate water to the location and planning for fluctuation in demand depending on the stage of the project. It is amazing the stuff that I take for granted in day-to-day life that had to be considered when working on such a project.

My own development came on leaps and bounds there. So did my awareness of how interconnected all these parts of the industry were. It gave me a lot of insight into how things work on a global scale. University can only teach you so much of the fundamental concepts, it’s about really understanding how the oil and gas industry works in real life. Working in Sharjah really gave me a sense of where I could fit in, and a solid foundation in my chosen discipline on which to build and develop.

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The next generation