Female Chartered Engineer Officers - are you avoiding 170?

[OldCone]

As an old cone-head I am delighted to see that there are a healthy number of female officers who have chosen the "path of the cone" over the past few years. They have seen the light, decided to get a professional qualification which is highly valued both in the service and in civvy street - so much so that our own Institution of Royal Engineers is, quite rightly, making moves to emulate the professional accreditation systems established by the civilian engineering institutions.
My question is this; Why is it that there are at least 6 serving regular female PQE Majors who are apparently, repeatedly avoiding serving at 170 Infrastructure Support Engineer Group? Not one of them has done their bit at Chilwell during living memory!
Our highly valued volunteers in 65 have bucked the trend and lead the way when it comes to deploying female CEng officers to war zones - so why not the regular serving CEng officers?
Is there an APC policy not to post female PQEs to Chilwell?
Do APC lack the backbone required to post a female officer to one of the busiest and most operationally committed units in the British Army?
A cynic might say that female regular PQEs were war-dodging - Not I though.

 

[A_Knocker_Till_The_End]

maybe they are too busy do the house work perhaps ????

 

[plant_life]

I know of one who was my OC. She did a 2 I/C slot in 535 when they were in NI, came to us then went off to DLO.

 

[A_Knocker_Till_The_End]

I know of one who was my OC. She did a 2 I/C slot in 535 when they were in NI, came to us then went off to DLO.

same one that was VERY FRIENDLY with jnco's

 

[plant_life]

She certainly wasn't very friendly with me!

 

[A_Knocker_Till_The_End]

She certainly wasn't very friendly with me!

could you blame her.

she was probably in denial mate.

 

[muhandis89]

If you look at the upper reaches of The Corps,very few officers(PQE) get there.Fortunately combat engineering still rules!

 

[A_Knocker_Till_The_End]

or the lure of the bright shining glint of cash that civvy companies pay without the need to pack your bucket & spade yearly.

 

[plant_life]

A CO of 22 Engr Regt was a CEng so it is not a complete career foul. I think a better advertised career path for CEng is needed.

 

[Sapper145]

You had TA PQE Officers from 65 deployed on Ops? The only ones I saw on ops apart from a couple of gleaming JNCO's were normally working for the contractors as civvies. Including one delightful individual who on arrival introduced himself to all the heads of sheds of the resident units by saying "Hi, I'm Major XXXXXXX RE". He didn't get away with that buffoonery for long Quite disappointing when you bear in mind he was also an OC of a STRE(V) and should have known better if he thought that would gain him any leverage with us.

Acceptable to work for a contractor on lots of dosh, not acceptable to use a TA rank whilst doing so after the STRE out there was very short of manpower and a trawl of 65 produced no Officer volunteers, again.

Edited to add: Beats me why there are no female OC's/2IC's at Chilwell? Never even crossed my mind but its a valid point.

As an old cone-head I am delighted to see that there are a healthy number of female officers who have chosen the "path of the cone" over the past few years. They have seen the light, decided to get a professional qualification which is highly valued both in the service and in civvy street - so much so that our own Institution of Royal Engineers is, quite rightly, making moves to emulate the professional accreditation systems established by the civilian engineering institutions.
My question is this; Why is it that there are at least 6 serving regular female PQE Majors who are apparently, repeatedly avoiding serving at 170 Infrastructure Support Engineer Group? Not one of them has done their bit at Chilwell during living memory!
Our highly valued volunteers in 65 have bucked the trend and lead the way when it comes to deploying female CEng officers to war zones - so why not the regular serving CEng officers?
Is there an APC policy not to post female PQEs to Chilwell?
Do APC lack the backbone required to post a female officer to one of the busiest and most operationally committed units in the British Army?
A cynic might say that female regular PQEs were war-dodging - Not I though.

 

[muhandis89]

One of a very few that I can think of!

A CO of 22 Engr Regt was a CEng so it is not a complete career foul. I think a better advertised career path for CEng is needed.

 

[plant_life]

She certainly wasn't very friendly with me!

could you blame her.

she was probably in denial mate.

Ask Older By The Day or Pantsoff, they were in the same Sqn as me when she was OC and have a similar opinion of her.

Any way back on track. What doesn't help is that a two year post as an OC of an STRE only counts as one years command when the promotion board sits for Lt Col so they need to do 2 OC posts. It's a bit strange, I know an STRE OC only has a tenth of the manpower however he/she is the project officer for over $300 million or so dollars woth of work in Afghanistan. You don't get many OCs of field/armoured etc sqns managing that kind of budget.

 

[tooled-up]

This thread has gone totally over my head....I did my time in The Corps, 10 yrs 185 days, according to my red book, inc JL's service, but I haven't got a clue about what any of you are talking about ,have I led a sheltered life, or am I missing something...LOL!?

 

[Cait]

Edited to add: Beats me why there are no female OC's/2IC's at Chilwell? Never even crossed my mind but its a valid point.

There are, I can think of a couple in 65, although not sure about the regular Wks Gp's

 

[plant_life]

As far as I know there aren't any in the regular Wks Gps at the moment but I might be wrong.

 

[OldCone]

Well done 65 - As I said at the beginning of this thread, there are volunteer female Chartered Engineer officers who are doing their bit in 65 Wks Gp. Unfortunately the regular female officers seem unprepared to do their bit at Chilwell and continually avoid being posted to 170 Infra Sp Engr Gp.

The thing that bugs me is that they seem to be encouraged to do this. The unwritten policy results in some of us doing more time at 170 when we would like to have a go at some of the other C Eng posts - which are being occupied by the ladies

 

[WitchfinderGeneral]

To tell the truth, I don’t care what gender or flavour of Technical Officer, Garrison Engineer or Clerk of Works is avoiding 170. It’s about time they all pulled their weight.

All the teams at Chilwell are seriously undermanned. 170 has an 11 month turnaround between operational tours. That 11 months is chocked full of exercises, Optag training and other overseas trips. FACT: you cannot fit in all your leave and have any time in the office. THIS IS UNSUSTAINABLE!

The Corps needs to take a long hard look at how they man HERRICK, 170 will never fit the FORM cycle and you never know what’s over the hill. Withdrawal form TELIC is not going to let anyone off the hook, you can bet a new challenge will have to be met in the next few years.

Old Cone can stop complaining about a few women not coming to 170 (I cant blame them) and start to bang on about the real problems, overstretch, declining moral, retention and a lack of true leadership and moral courage from the officer corps in the whole of the Engineers.

 

[plant_life]

Hear, hear! There needs to be a serious look at manning levels within 170 and tour cycles. The sad thing is that the PQE's, GE's, Clk Wks and MPF has got it easier than the juniors, only spending 2 or 3 years there.

The juniors on a first posting spend 5 years there! It is quite feasible for a junior to spend 2 out of 5 years on operations. Add on 5 months for annual leave, 4 months for POTL, 10 months for TIR's that's another year and a half gone. Then you will have another 6 or 7 months on your Class One. A junior can expect 4 out of 5 years to be busy even without pre-deployment training, JNCO cadre and other exercises not already mentioned.

What doesn't help is the fact that you can not just magic personnel out of thin air. Whilst the C roster is looking pretty healthy at the moment at SSgt level the other disciplines are quite thin on the ground, especially GE's. Even allowing for the fact that Clk Wks can commission from WO2 (so long as they have a relevent degree) it doesn't short out the short term manning problems which are besetting the whole of the technical roster.

 

[Sapper145]

Creating a new works group without creating the relevant tech trained personnel to fill it was barking to say the least. Cross postings to fill slots for a tour! The bottom line is that all it has really provided was a new CO's post for a PQE and 3 new OC's slots. Jobs for the boys and not looking at the real reason why we are undermanned in the conehead world?

I think this sums up the Corps attitude to the undermanning and overstretch of the tech roster:

 

[ABrighter2006]

To tell the truth, I don’t care what gender or flavour of Technical Officer, Garrison Engineer or Clerk of Works is avoiding 170. It’s about time they all pulled their weight.

All the teams at Chilwell are seriously undermanned. 170 has an 11 month turnaround between operational tours. That 11 months is chocked full of exercises, Optag training and other overseas trips. FACT: you cannot fit in all your leave and have any time in the office. THIS IS UNSUSTAINABLE!

The Corps needs to take a long hard look at how they man HERRICK, 170 will never fit the FORM cycle and you never know what’s over the hill. Withdrawal form TELIC is not going to let anyone off the hook, you can bet a new challenge will have to be met in the next few years.

Old Cone can stop complaining about a few women not coming to 170 (I cant blame them) and start to bang on about the real problems, overstretch, declining moral, retention and a lack of true leadership and moral courage from the officer corps in the whole of the Engineers.

Well said Witchfinder. High time that some considered their responsibilities and addressed a pinch point that has got tighter year-on-year for five years plus.