Chloe Firth is embarking on a high-flying career.

Since leaving Forster Community College in Bradford, the electrical designer with Bradford’s long-established engineering firm, Rycroft, has had some pretty high-profile assignments.

Chloe has been involved in the design of the heating systems within the Royal Navy’s latest aircraft carriers, and is now part of the design team working on the electrical system for the Olympic village, under construction in London, ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games.

The 17-year-old, from Odsal, followed her brother, Ashley, into electrical engineering. Ashley is an apprentice coppersmith, also with Rycroft, part of the Ormanby Group, who secured the £1m contract.

Ormanby, which has another manufacturing site in Halifax, also create water treatment and heat exchange equipment for hospitals and hotels.

Chloe joined the company in February after leaving Forster Community College. She uses Autocad technology to design the heating and electrical systems. In September she will embark on an electrical apprenticeship to increase her knowledge of the installation side of the industry.

While more women are now working in engineering than in previous years, Chloe is one of only a few females working in this particular area of the industry. She is currently the only woman working on the design system at Rycroft.

Graham Hunter, electrical design manager, who was retiring after 18 years with the company on the day we spoke, says while there are women working in other sectors of the industry, such as estimating and panel building, it is quite a rarity for a female to work on the electrical design.

He says due to the specialist nature of their work, they are keen to “grow their own” apprentices and encourage more women to come on board.

“Because we are a specialist company and probably have more coppersmiths here than any other company in the country, we have to ‘grow our own’. We do a lot of in-house training and apprenticeships,” says Graham.

Some of the firm’s high-profile projects include providing the hot water supply within the Millennium Dome. They’ve worked in most of the country’s hospitals, on naval ships, explorers and deep-sea diving vessels.

In more than a century of trading, Rycroft has built up a prestigious portfolio of contacts – some of the sophisticated heating systems designed by their in-house experts have even been installed in Saudi Prince’s palaces.

“We have so many hundreds of years’ experience,” says Graham, who hopes the younger generation they are now nurturing will continue the legacy.

Chatting with Chloe about her high-profile assignments, she appears enthusiastic about her job and eager to progress.

On the skills essential to this type of role, she says: “You need patience and good communication skills. You need to be able to talk to people.”

Graham adds attention to detail and an aptitude for drawing, to the list.

The greatest satisfaction for him is creating and producing something.

  • For more information about a career in technical design, call Bradford College on (01274) 433333.