Award-winning Paul Otway has been a subsea engineer for several years now but when he graduated in crisis-wracked 2008, he faced a world of uncertainty.
This graduate in mechanical engineering from Southampton, however, was selected for Jee’s graduate scheme, which included a suite of training courses in Aberdeen and at the firm’s Westhill offices.
Why take this job?
Otway: “The real driver towards working in oil and gas over a job in renewables was initially purely practical – job stability. No industry could be totally immune to the effects of the financial crisis, but the oil and gas sector was likely to be more stable than many other engineering industries.”
What is the core of your job?
Otway: “Subsea engineer for Jee, predominantly working on pipeline integrity management projects.”
Who or what has influenced you most in your career to date?
Otway: “The biggest influence on my career to date has been the firm’s Angola projects. I generally work as the only Jee engineer on the projects, so I have had to quickly adapt from working as part of a project team in the ‘safe’ environment at Jee, to working with significant independence and a limited safety net.”
Where do you see your career going?
Otway: “I want to maintain some diversity in the types of project I work on before perhaps becoming more specialised in future.”
What advice would you give to others looking to get into the oil and gas industry?
Otway: “Placements while at university are invaluable and I cannot recommend them enough – very few students know what they really want to do as a career and if you don’t experience different roles before applying for jobs you may end up in an industry that really isn’t for you.
“A placement you don’t enjoy can be just as valuable in directing your choice of career path as a placement you love.”
If you weren’t doing the job you are in now, what else would you be doing?
Otway: “I would definitely be in an engineering role somewhere, perhaps in another industry.”
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