A Warm Welcome For Hazelwood College
19 May 2010
As part of national ‘engineers week’, and in conjunction with the Institution of Civil Engineers, Phoenix Natural Gas recently hosted a site visit from a large group of second year pupils from Hazelwood College.
The group were given a guided tour of Phoenix’s Belfast headquarters and also had several presentations from senior engineering managers from the gas company. One of those who presented was Marcus McFarlane who manages all connections throughout Phoenix’s 3,000 km pipe network.
Mr McFarlane commented on the day by saying:
“We were very pleased to host a visit from the school and I remember as a youngster myself being inspired to seek out a career in engineering. Every day we rely on utility networks that are becoming increasingly more complex and sophisticated. Modern society couldn’t function without highly developed electricity, water, and gas networks, which constantly need updated to meet the latest EU and UK legislation and user demands. If we have inspired even a handful of the next generation of local engineering professionals then I believe this will have been a successful session”.
The Government recently identified the areas of science, technology, engineering and maths as being subjects that they would like to see youngsters strive to get qualifications in. The natural gas industry in Northern Ireland is continuing to grow connecting around 200 new customers every week and pipelines are being extended further every day.
Pic: Phoenix Engineering Manager Marcus McFarlane welcomes Hazelwood pupils Courtney McAuley (12), Fiona Havock (13) and Daniel Given (13). The pupils are joined by school Science teacher Teresa Graham.