We are excited to launch our first ever 'Big Questions' blog with Martin Tugwell, CIHT President. Martin was welcomed into the year-long Presidential role starting in June. Martin is also the Programme Director for England's Economic Heartland, who provide the region’s voice on strategic infrastructure and services. With their leadership focusing from addressing barriers to realising potential.
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Every month we ask an influential industry leader to answer the big questions on every Young Professionals mind.
The aim of this is to help you thrive in your current careers whilst looking ahead to the future and some of the challenges you may face.
We hope you find these questions & answers useful to both your current career experiences and future ones!
I was very fortunate as a young professional: there were tremendous opportunities within Devon County Council (where I spent the first part of my career) to gain experience right across the range of our profession, from transport modelling, through transport studies, into bridge and road design and then out onto sites supervising construction. Along the way I had the chance to work on strategic planning, as well as development management. The way the industry operates today it can be a lot harder for young professionals to get that ‘roundness’ as easily and as quickly. It makes it all the more important for public and private sector organisations to collaborate with a view to creating opportunities that enable young professionals to gain that broader experience. The CIHT’s new Public and Education sector partnering networks – which complement the private sector network – offer the opportunity to start conversations that might help in this regard.
I’d encourage young professionals to actively seek out opportunities to experience as many facets of our profession as possible. By nature I have an inquisitive mind and I found that reaching out to others opened up a range of perspectives that helped me grow professionally. It also helped me find where I could add most value. In particular I realised the scope for me to make a difference. Having a broad understanding of our profession makes it easier to see connections that perhaps others might not necessarily appreciate: I quickly found that there were opportunities to shape the direction of travel in ways that I might not have otherwise appreciated.
Our transport system is going through tremendous change, driven in no small part by each and every one of us: we are all consumers of transport and it is our choices that define future demand. If we think about the way in which we want to access services and opportunities then the future of our transport system is not going to be ‘business as usual’. The perspective and insight that Young Professionals bring has to be at the forefront of shaping tomorrow today. One of the reasons why I joined the CIHT is that it has always been an environment in which everyone’s contribution makes a difference. The Young Professionals Network is already adding so much to the work of the CIHT and I’m really looking forward to joining the 2nd Young Professionals Conference in Manchester on 14th November.
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