James Sallows
Corporate Relationships Executive, EngineeringUK
James joined EngineeringUK in 2025 and supports the smooth running of all things Corporate Relationships – from delivering EngineeringUK’s quarterly Business & Industry Panels to sharing regular updates on policy, research and STEM outreach with our wonderful members.
Take a look up the railtrack
Back in June this year, a few of us in the Business & Industry team went full Proclaimers by embarking on a near-500-mile round trip from London to West Cumbria.
It was time for the summer edition of our Business & Industry Panel. For those new to EngineeringUK, these are hybrid events where we come together with our wonderful Corporate Members. We all share insights and best practice, hosted in person at one of our members’ sites with the option to join online.
At the centre of June’s Panel was a collective conversation on one of engineering’s biggest workforce challenges, retaining women in mid-career roles in the sector.
Among the 20 or so organisations in attendance were researchers from the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) and the Institute for Employment Studies (IES). Context was set by our own Susi Farnworth with an update on the gender pathways into engineering and technology project. Then RAEng and IES guided us through some emerging findings from their study on retention of women in engineering. This was ahead of a bigger release due later this year, which we’re very much looking forward to.
They highlighted how workplace culture, flexibility, career progression, leadership and caring responsibilities influence whether women can stay, progress and thrive in engineering careers. Although many of the findings were not new, their relevance was a reminder of ongoing challenges and the collective responsibility to address them.
Indeed, members expressed their keenness to move beyond raising awareness to tackling everyday barriers. We heard a lot of personal stories from the group too. Common themes included flexible jobs, inclusive cultures, clearer progression, stronger accountability, better workforce data, and support for returners and those with different life circumstances..
It was a rich session and while we still have far to go, the drive and know-how was profound.
But why go all the way to Cumbria? In a heatwave? We have long wanted to head to the county to spend time with not 1 but 2 of our Corporate Members. They both have an immense presence there: Nuclear Waste Services and Sellafield under the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority umbrella.
The nuclear sector is a big part of the membership at EngineeringUK, so the trip felt needed. Also, summer is probably the ideal time to visit a part of the UK that has 50 words for rain.
Nuclear Waste Services generously hosted us at the Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR) in Drigg. On the surface, and with all due respect, LLWR looks unremarkable - security fences, shipping containers, mounds of stones and rubble, nondescript industrial buildings. Beneath it, however, sit over a million cubic meters or low-level radioactive waste, stored in layers of concrete and aggregate inside the containers. Our guide told us there’s also a fair amount of TNT buried at the site from when it produced munitions during World War II. Rest assured the 2 substances are kept well apart.
Surely a secure facility that used to produce explosives but now houses tonnes of radioactive material would be enough to satisfy anyone’s nuclear curiosity? Not us! Because the next day we headed to Sellafield, ‘the most iconic nuclear facility in the world’.
Sellafield also began life producing ordnance but got repurposed for nuclear after World War 2. This was when the UK had to work out how to build a lot of nuclear capability on its own due to the US McMahon Act. It used to be called Windscale – a name most closely associated with the 1957 fire that remains the UK’s biggest nuclear accident. Our guide said it could have been so much worse had it not been for unwieldy chimney filters named ‘Cockroft’s folly’.
That said, you could see why some might describe Sellafield as a nuclear theme park. It has its own railway, operates a nuclear police force and handles all the UK’s high-level nuclear waste. It also filters wastewater using a special mineral (called clinoptilolite) extracted from the Mojave desert and uses giant ‘ponds’ to process irradiated fuel and waste. Plus, it’s double the area of the City of London… and it’s next door to a golf course.
The engineering efforts at both sites are incredible, and their scale and influence on the region cannot be understated.
But Sellafield and LLWR are physical embodiments of long-term consequences. Events and decisions made decades ago that need expertise, commitment, support and resources, today and for years to come. So given the theme for the Panel, perhaps it was the perfect backdrop.
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