Indranil Kongar

Name: Indranil Kongar
Job: Engineer
Area of work: Highways
Employer: Alan Baxter & Associates
Qualifications: MEng civil and environmental engineering, Imperial College London 

I chose civil engineering because I wanted to have a tangible end product from my work and the potential to make a difference to the quality of people’s lives. Transport and highways is often taken for granted, but you only have to see how passionate people become about transport policy issues or when things go wrong to realise how important it is to our everyday lives.

Working in urban design

I work in the urban design group, so most of our projects go beyond just designing a road. We provide transport and movement advice for the production of development frameworks, and outline planning applications for major developments. If these get approval, then we work on the detailed design of individual components. Generally we work on larger development proposals rather than stand-alone highways projects. We like to take a holistic approach and the best solutions come when you are able to consider wider issues.

On a design project, I sketch out concept ideas and have regular design reviews either internally or with the wider team, before drawing up final schemes – which is the most satisfying part. On a more analytical project, such as a transport assessment, I do a lot of research, report writing, calculations and spreadsheet analysis.

Staying hands on

In ten years’ time, I’d like to be responsible for setting the strategic direction for my own jobs. A lot of good designers get lost to management positions quite early in their careers and I’m keen to retain a hands-on design role. Ultimately, I want to be able to look back at those ten years and know that I have made a positive difference.