Member Article

CRA Announce Latest 'STEM' Intern Recruit

As part of its continuing support of women in engineering, one of the UKs leading risk management consultancies - Corporate Risk Associates - is celebrating the recruitment of a new member to its ever growing team.

Formed in 2000, with only two staff members heading up the company, Corporate Risk Associates (CRA) has grown dramatically in the last 16 years. Initially formed to manage risk in the nuclear energy sector, the business has grown substantially to also manage risk across the nuclear, oil and gas and defence industries.

The company has always heavily focused its efforts in actively encouraging and promoting the uptake of women in STEM subjects and careers. As part of these efforts, CRA recently announced the appointment of Francesca Brandford-Adams, originally on a three-month intern programme, Francesca has now joined the team in a full-time role, having accepted the role of Graduate Consultant.

Francesca joins the team having completed a Master’s degree in Chemistry, specialising in polymer and colloidal science, from the University of Warwick. This is combined with a period of experience as a Research Analyst in Toulouse, France.

Speaking of her new role, Francesca said; “I was delighted to be selected to join the CRA team as its latest intern and now that has evolved into a full time position I’m absolutely thrilled. I am very interested in developing my skills in Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) and, after recently completing work in France, I am ready for the next challenge.”

Francesca was the first graduate selected from the University of Warwick to take part in an internship, the company regularly supports students undertaking their final year dissertation at Manchester University Nuclear Technology Education Consortium (NTEC) and Imperial College of London.

The development of CRA has meant that, as the team has expanded, its workforce now makes up one of the highest ratios of female to male Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates in the industry. Nearly 90% of the CRA team are STEM graduates, whose skills are absolutely essential to the development and success of the business.

CEO and founder, Jasbir Sidhu, said; “We owe the growing success of the business to our highly skilled workforce. As a team we have all, individually and together, strived to achieve the very best client service and this has resulted in continuous success. As a business we like to offer this type of opportunity to particularly outstanding, specifically selected students and we are delighted to welcome Francesca to our team. We can’t wait to see how her skill set will help us to develop our business further.”

As well as continuing its support of women in engineering and developing tomorrow’s future professionals, CRA has taken on Francesca to help progress the company’s already well established reputation of effectively quantifying risk and uncertainty through industry knowledge and skillset. As part of ongoing research and development CRA’s Principal Consultant, Ashraf El-Shanawany, having just completed the requirements for an Engineering Doctorate, will be guiding Francesca throughout her three-month internship.

CRA has offices across the UK in London, Newcastle, Gloucester, Surrey and Warrington. The company is an expert in providing risk analysis to safety-critical industries. They were also recently awarded the Institute of Physics Award for Best Practice in Professional Development in 2015.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Scarab4 .