International Women in Engineering Day 2022 – Sara Mohtashami

20th June, 2022

Thursday 23rd June is International Women in Engineering Day, organised by the Women’s Engineering Society to focus on the important role that women play within the engineering industry.

We have spoken to a number of female engineers and staff at ODE to explore what drew them to engineering and to understand the important contributions they make to the industry.

Firstly we spoke to Sara Mohtashami, Principal Electrical Engineer (Renewables) at ODE.

What do you find rewarding about your role in engineering?

There are a number of building global pressures, and it is very rewarding to be an engineer working in renewables where I can be at the core of an industry which is changing the world and see the positive impacts that our work has.

Can you provide an example of when your contributions have brought innovation to a project or task?

At the Iran Ministry of Energy, I was responsible for the annual maintenance planning of HV substations. During annual maintenance inspections, we would often realise that we were inspecting and maintaining equipment that was in perfectly fine working order. We were needlessly using time and manhour resources, and unnecessary maintenance increased the risk of equipment failure as a result of human error in the process (incorrect installation etc…).

Whilst many advanced and smarter asset management strategies had been developed and practised in other industries such as Nuclear Power, Defence and Maritime, until then, these strategies were not practised in power networks as the required data was not accessible in the electricity network or it was very costly to access.

I defined and won funding for a research project funded by the Ministry of Energy to review and optimise the maintenance procedure in our network. Based on the findings of that project, the annual maintenance planning of our network was updated and it was counted as one of the first smart asset management strategies in the region.

What new developments in the industry are you most interested in?

Wind turbines are fast-developing technologies. Since the early 2000s, wind turbines have grown in size—both height and blade lengths—and are able to generate more energy. With the industry growing rapidly, on many of our projects we base our designs on a turbine capacity which is not yet in the market but expected to be available by the time of construction! This rapid development provides a fast-paced and challenging environment to work in.