Katie Gibbs
Department for Transport,
Government OR Service
The discovery of O.R. during my Maths degree at Cardiff was something of a revelation. I had chosen to study Maths and Philosophy in the first year of my degree, but gave up the Philosophy element in the second and third years and was feeling that my choice of course was rather theoretical until I took some modules in O.R. Here was an application of maths and analytical thinking which could be directly applied to real life and everyday problems!
I applied to study for an MSc in O.R. at Southampton. I deferred this for two years, and spent 18 months working for a medical imaging software company, as a "technical author", writing their user guides and product documentation and running training courses, and the rest of the time preparing for another year studying by doing some globetrotting. The MSc was a fantastic introduction to a whole range of subjects I hadn't studied before, and also a chance to deepen my knowledge in other areas. On completion of my MSc, I was offered a job in the Government O.R. Service, in the O.R. group at the Department for Transport.
That was 9 years ago, in 1997. Despite all the plans I had to move around different Government Departments or other companies and organisations to build my career, I am still happily working for the Department for Transport, and have built a career here. Over the years, restructuring of government departments has meant that the scope of work our group undertakes has extended to encompass housing, local government and local taxation and the fire service, as well as all the areas traditionally covered by the Department for Transport. In fact, I have worked for 4 different Government Departments whilst sitting at the same desk. We work as an internal consultancy - each piece of work is clearly defined as a project and has a client/sponsor in a business area of the Department. Every time I think about looking for a different job, a project comes along which is too good to turn down!
I started as a junior analyst, responsible for much of the number crunching and modelling work, and am now a senior project manager, and line manager to some of the other O.R. staff. So I now spend more of my time setting up projects and leading a team to build models and carry out analysis. Communicating ideas has become increasingly important. Right from the beginning I was encouraged to find out as much about the client's business area as possible, and this is something I enjoy - it's very rewarding to talk to clients, investigate and understand their business, and then help them improve their business delivery or policy making through evidence from analytical thinking or modelling. Most rewarding of all is the genuine "thank you" from a client at the end of a project, and the conversion of that client to an O.R. believer!
| | | | | | | | | | | ||||||
| | | | | | | | | | | ||||||
| | | | | | | | | | |
