Mrs Petra Gratton

Academic Responsibilities

• Admissions Tutor for all undergraduate courses in the Mechanical Engineering Subject Area
• Course Director for the MSc in Building Services Engineering Management

Academic Career

• 1985 – BSc in Building (Engineering and Management) from Brunel University
• 1993 – MBA from University of Surrey
• 1998 to present - Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering

Industrial Career

Industrial placement with North West Thames Regional Health Authority in their M&E design office.

Assistant Clerk of Works (industrial placement) with PSA/Site Control at Wellington Barracks, Birdcage Walk, London monitoring installation of engineering services in the NAAFI.

Trainee Mechanical Building Services Engineer (another placement!) with consulting engineers Cundall, Johnston and Partners, working on a variety of housing projects in London.

Trainee Engineer with consulting engineers Donald Smith, Seymour and Rooley in their Ealing office, working on design of the Al Rashid University, Baghdad.

Gaining loads of experience in Industrial Training Placements was great. After graduating Cundall, Johnston and Partners offered me a job as a Project Engineer. I worked on hotels and some exotic housing projects (including a city penthouse and a remote country castle) and several corporate headquarter offices. Because I had "done computing" at Brunel University as part of my degree, I developed the role of full-time Computer Systems Manager in the London office as we built up the IT resources to millions of pounds-worth of system used in the design and management of building services engineering facilities. In 1992 recession hit the building industry and I decided I needed an intellectual challenge that would broaden my knowledge! So, I signed up for a one-year full-time MBA course.

After graduating with the MBA I found jobs scarce, but LOADS of work about. So I started my own consultancy business specialising in training and management of computer applications for the design and operation of building engineering services.

I joined the Building Research Establishment at Watford to manage projects to promote the management issues of using energy efficiency in buildings as part of the government’s Energy Efficiency Best Practice programme.

In 1997 I took up the opportunity to be Business Support Manager, with responsibilities for quality management, with a firm of consulting engineers in Farnborough.

July 1998: Spiraled back to Brunel University to develop a new MSc course - based on all the knowledge and experience gained from my adventures in industry!

Research Interests

Principle research interests lie in the development of individual professional engineers; this includes addressing issues of training and education, recruitment and retention of engineering students, and the development of interpersonal skills.

Current Research

• The effect of combining the flying training and engineering education of pilots
• Academic progression and professional development of distance learning students in building services engineering

Teaching

• Engineering Finance and Accounting
• Management of People in Engineering Activities
• Organization of Engineering Business
• Management of Facilities and Engineering Contracts
• Strategic Management, Innovation and Enterprise
• Racing Team Management
• Racing Legislation, Finance and Sponsorship
• Business Ethics in Engineering
• Professional Engineering Applications and Practice

Memberships

• Affiliate of the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE)
• Affiliate of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)
• Member of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) (President: 1998 - 1999)

Professional Committees

• Trustee of the Engineering Development Trust (EDT)
• Member of the Editorial Board of ‘The Woman Engineer’, journal of the WES

Professionally Related

• Ambassador for STEMNET