People Spotlight: Meet Fay Bull

Our People Spotlight series gives you an inside look at our technical experts around the world. This week, we are highlighting a blue-green infrastructure lead from our Water business in the UK and providing an insight into their inspiration and work.

Fay’s passion for the water industry was developed through several roles in consultancy and through working with local government agencies. She specializes in delivering complex capital programs involving flood risk, surface water and wastewater projects. She has a particular interest in urban water management and the technical, economic and societal opportunities and challenges that these environments present.

What inspired you to join the industry?

I’ve always loved the natural environment and having graduated with a degree in Geography in the mid-2000’s, the job market was buoyant. I managed to secure a few job offers and I quite liked the sound of a ‘Graduate Flood Risk Specialist’, not least because my friends called me Fay Flood. It was quite fitting! From that point, I became fascinated with flooding and water management, and I could see there was an opportunity to make a real difference to society and nature through my work. I would love to say that joining the industry was more planned, but once I’d dipped my toe in the water (pun intended!) the rest was history!

What is your favourite AECOM project that you’ve worked on and why?

My current project is my favourite. We are the lead design partner for Severn Trent for their trailblazing Mansfield Sustainable Flood Resilience Programme — the largest sustainable drainage retrofit project in the UK. We’re supporting the delivery of thousands of features like rain gardens, basins and bioswales to make the town more climate resilient, and to make it a greener and fresher place to live and work.

I’m enjoying the project for several reasons. Primarily, we’ve developed an amazing, high performing delivery team within AECOM and it’s an absolute joy to lead the team as a project director. I also enjoy working as part of a collaborative client-consultant-contractor team who are all focused and determined to meet an incredibly ambitious programme by March 2025. Construction of our early designs is well underway and it’s inspiring to see the sustainable legacy that our work will deliver.

Tell us a story of how your work positively impacted the community.

One of the most meaningful projects that I delivered was for a small community of six houses while I worked in the local government. The properties had flooded several times and in 2013 they flooded to nearly a meter depth and residents were displaced from their houses for over six months.

I met residents soon after the flooding and they were understandably emotional. Some had lost personal belongings that couldn’t be replaced. Others were furious that it was happening so frequently. Over the course of a few months, I developed a relationship with the community, engaged partners, investigated the root cause of the flooding, and secured funding to deliver a small-scale flood protection project for the houses.

Whenever I’m in the area, I divert to look at the project and check if it’s looking shipshape! The smaller projects with direct impact can be equally as rewarding as the bigger ones.

Share a piece of career advice.

Picture your career as a book, and each stage is a chapter. There might be some twists and turns, some chapters might be a bit dull, some eye poppingly amazing, and there could even be a cliff edge moment to keep readers on their toes. But the pages keep turning, and the story evolves. Whatever happens in your career, have faith that it’s all part of your story.