Engineering Everyday:  Technology, Innovation, and Inclusion with Glass

In this episode of The Equity Edge our industry focus is glass.  Hosts Professor Sue Black OBE and Jo Stansfield are joined by guests Roma Agrawal, Structural Engineer, Author and Broadcaster, Fiacre O’Donnell, Director of Sustainability at Encirc, Furkan Karayel, Author of the best-selling book Inclusive Intelligence and Neelam Mughal, Innovation Lead for the Innovate UK Transforming Foundation Industries.

We learn about the history of glass, how it is made, and the current challenges for decarbonisation, with a focus on the design and engineering of The Shard in London, the tallest building in Western Europe.  The guests share insights on the role of inclusion unleashing innovation in glass and the foundation industries as a whole.  They discuss initiatives to promote gender diversity in the manufacturing industry and the importance of involving middle-management, and explore the importance of inclusive leadership for team performance and wellbeing.

Meet our guests

Episode Transcript

Episode Transcript

Sue Black

Welcome!  The Equity Edge is all about shaping tomorrow’s foundation industries, with a focus on EDI – that’s equity, diversity, and inclusion, and how it can help us achieve a sustainable and fairer future.

I’m Professor Sue Black. I’m Professor of computer science and technology evangelist at Durham University, leading pioneering initiatives like our award winning TechUPWomen programme championing diversity in STEM

Jo Stansfield

And I’m Jo Stansfield. I’m an engineer-turned-business-psychologist specialising in equity, diversity and inclusion in engineering fields. Welcome to The Equity Edge podcast.

Sue Black

Together we are working with TransFIRe, a programme investigating how the foundation industries can develop innovative solutions to reduce waste and energy use, and to accelerate the development of clean technologies.

Jo Stansfield

These are the industries that make 75% of the materials we see around us, and are fundamental to modern society – they are: cement, metals, ceramics, glass, paper and chemicals.

 

Sue Black 

Hi everybody. In this equity edge episode we’re talking about glass innovation and inclusion. In our everyday lives, we’re all surrounded by glass, from bottles to windows to the glasses we wear, and much more. Glass is an integral component of our day to day lives. But is there more to grass than meets the eye? Today we’ll hear from leading industry experts and explore the role of inclusion to unleash innovation in glass and the foundation industries as a whole. Who’s joining us for this episode, Jo?

Jo Stansfield 

Thanks, Sue. Today we’re joined by Roma Agrawal, a structural engineer, author and broadcaster, also known as Roma the Engineer. Roma has designed bridges, skyscrapers and sculptures with signature architects, including the iconic Shard in London. Welcome to the show Roma.

Roma Agrawal 

Thank you so much.

Jo Stansfield 

And we have Fiacre O’Donnell. He’s Director of Sustainability at Encirc, a leading business in glass container design, manufacturing and bottling. He’s also a member of TransFIRe’s stakeholder steering group. Welcome Fiacre.

Fiacre O’Donnell 

Thanks, Jo.

Jo Stansfield 

And next we have Furkan Karayel, author of the best selling book Inclusive Intelligence and an inclusive leadership advisor. Welcome to the show, Furkan.

Furkan Karayel 

Thank you, Jo.

Jo Stansfield 

And finally we have Neelam Mughal. Neelam is Innovation Lead for the Innovate UK Transforming Foundation Industries challenge, and is working to raise the profile of diverse innovators across the materials industries. Welcome to the show, Neelam.

Neelam Mughal 

Thanks, Jo.

Sue Black 

Thanks very much, Jo. So Fiacre, we’ll start with you. Can you tell us a bit about the history of glass, how it’s made, different types of glass, and maybe some things that we might not know about glass?

Fiacre O’Donnell 

Yeah, thanks Sue. There’s multiple different varieties of glass of course, flat glass, Pyrex, and so on. From our perspective, we manufacture container glass or sometimes referred to as hollow glass or silica glass. And that’s principally for the food and beverage industry. We are part of the Vidrala group. The Vidrala group are headquartered in Bilbao. We have 10 plants across the world, including two recent acquisitions in Brazil. We also have something quite unique in our own plants, and that our plant in Chester not only manufactures glass containers, but we also fill glass containers. So we bring wines in from all over the world and we fill it. Big impact in the carbon footprint of the wine, about 170 grams less per bottle by filling it in the UK than then bringing it in filled, plus more consistent quality and so on. So looking at food preservation is one that worked really well. And that I think links back into one of the key attributes, I think, of glass, especially in this food and beverage sector. We like to think from that perspective on three things: health taste and environment. And I think if we start with taste, there’s not too many people that you will encounter that will tell you that things taste better than anything other than glass. You know, glass always seems to come up as being the preferred choice. And yet, sometimes the choice for glass is somewhat limited. From a health perspective, there’s been a surge recently on reports on other packaging materials, and the impact that they’re having on us. The amount of chemicals that are moving from product to packaging, and packaging, to product and so on. So again, being totally inert product glass is ideally suited for that space. The third one is environment. And this is where I suppose glass is a bit of a challenge in that, despite the fact that it’s 100% recyclable, if we could get it back, and in the UK we’re particularly poor at doing that, I would probably give Wales an exception to this, you know. If all the glass put in the market, say in the UK in 2021, the figures that we have, the glass remelt industry cut back less than 40%. Now, when you think of the scarcity of resources in the world, and then I mean, this extends all the way through all recyclable materials, we really need to be doing a lot more to get those materials back. And recycled glass has a big impact on the carbon footprint of future glass that we manufacture. But we do have a challenge in glass in terms of the emissions piece are fairly energy intensive. But I think the industry and total has set up a few trial furnaces now across Europe. We’re focusing on alternative energies like biomethane, hydrogen electrification, biofuels, and so on. And I think in the not too distant future we will solve that. So all of a sudden, in glass, we have a product that’s not only best for taste, best for your health, but will also be the best choice for the environment.

Sue Black 

Thanks, Fiacre. Can you tell us a bit about the history of glass and how it’s made, I suppose glass has been around for forever.

Fiacre O’Donnell 

At this point, you know, we can trace it back many 1000s of years, and different raw materials have been used for the manufacture of it in the past. As I mentioned earlier, it’s fairly energy intensive in the manufacture of it at this point. We’re running raw materials in a furnace at around about 1500 degrees centigrade, we run our furnaces 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, for about 12 years, or thereabouts, which is the life of a furnace. We then knock the furnace down and rebuild it again. And off we go again, for another 12 years. The raw materials for the manufacture of glass are natural materials, sand being the vast majority of it. Limestone has also played a part in it. And soda ash is a third one. We can combine those together in that furnace and melt it. And they’ll have specific purpose sand providing the silicon that we need. Soda ash is acting acting as a fluxing and a binding agent, and limestone acting as a stabilizer. We reduce the amounts of all those materials by using recycled glass which we call cullet. That has a great effect. Because when we use raw materials, we get about 15% reduction in volume. So you know if we put in a ton of raw materials, we get 15% less class out again. But if you put a ton of cullet into your furnace, you will get a ton of glass back and again. Makes it quite unique in that respect compared to other materials. Once it’s manufactured, once it’s made, it’s infinite. It can be here forever.

Sue Black 

Great. Thank you. Thanks, Fiacre. So moving on to you Roma, you’re probably best known for your work as a structural engineer on a very famous glass building the Shard which I’ve been in a few times, and it’s just utterly incredible inside and out. And I think the Shard is the tallest building in Western Europe. How was the shard designed and built and what’s special about the glass it uses? Wow, that’s interesting. And something like from the outside, if you’re not in the glass industry or engineering, you have no clue that people are even thinking about stuff like the colour of the glass or the flatness of the glass. That’s amazing. Thank you.

Roma Agrawal 

I mean, I could talk for an hour about how the shard was designed and built. But I think the overall principle from the architect was that they wanted to create a building that kind of merged into the sky in some ways. So you can see that in the shape of the building in terms of it being triangular. It’s like an elongated pyramid, if you haven’t seen it, it’s about 310 meters tall. And as you say, It’s the tallest building in Western Europe. So definitely quite a pioneering piece of engineering for all the people involved. So there was two ways that the architects achieved their vision of creating something that didn’t feel imposing and that merged into the sky. One was with the concept of the shards of glass, the broken sort of almost broken pieces of glass that don’t quite meet at the top, so it doesn’t feel like it’s, you know, it’s got a very distinctive, strong top to the building. So it allows it to kind of disappear off into the distance as you look up at it. And then the second one was the material of choice for the outside of the building. And of course, that’s glass. You can see the sky reflected in it. It’s got quite a blue tinge to it. And so from an engineering point of view, the two things we were thinking of one was the flatness of the glass. They are flat sheets of glass that are all stacked up. I think there’s eight football pitch worth of area in the glass that surrounds the Shard.  And you can imagine that if the surface of this glass was a little bit, you know, wavy not quite flat, that the reflections would be quite disturbed and distorted. And that’s not what we wanted. So the flatness was one thing that we looked at. So that impacted the cost, sure, but also the manufacturing processes to make sure it was as flat as we could get it within reason. And then the second one was the colour of the glass. So the architects, I remember, went off to Europe and looked at dozens of different samples of the glass with different impurity content, and I think, in particular iron. So by changing the amount of iron in the glass, they were able to make the glass more blue tinted, rather than perhaps the more green tint that you normally would associate it with. So, colour and flatness were the two big things that we really looked at with the glass on the Shard.  Yes. And I mean, as a structural engineer, we were more thinking about how do we support all of this glass, you know, this heavy, heavy material that you’re hanging off of the building. And so you know, what we spent a lot of time on was looking at how each pane of glass is supported off the floor slabs. And we also looked at the wind forces, so particularly at the top of the tower, where we have the spire, as we call it, and you’ve got these big cantilevers, or kind of almost unsupported pieces of glass going up into the sky, and the wind load is the highest, you know, the higher you go up. So we were really looking at, well, how much do these pieces of glass actually deflect. And, obviously, glass being quite a brittle material, we needed to really look at the connections between the panes and stuff. So it was definitely a very, you know, fun challenge. And it’s been up for over 10 years now. So I think we can all sort of say like, “yes, it’s good”. Yes, it wobbles around in the wind a little bit, but we’re good.

Sue Black 

Does it? Oh dear.

Roma Agrawal 

It should, it should wobble around. Otherwise things that are too stiff and don’t wobble around are the ones that crack really so flexibility is good.

Sue Black 

Yeah, no, absolutely. You just reminded me of when I used to live, I used to live in the highest residential block in Europe, which is Trellick Tower in Ladbroke Grove. We were on the top floor. And I remember, during the storms of 1986, we could tell the building was moving because when he went to the loo, the water level was moving in the loo, which is quite disconcerting. But actually, that’s a good thing, right? Yeah, you want it to do that. Thank you.

Jo Stansfield 

So let’s move on and talk about sustainability, and Neelam, I’d like to ask you as Innovation Lead for the Innovate UK Transforming the Foundation Industries Challenge, what are some of the challenges the program is working to address? And what kind of projects are you seeing in the glass sector, particularly?

Neelam Mughal 

Sure, Jo. So you… I think we can all recognize that these industries are clearly vital for economic development, but often they face very significant environmental, and social challenges. The TFI challenge is really looking to address some of these. So some of our focus areas have really been around resource efficiency. So finding ways to optimize resource use and raw materials, reducing waste and minimizing the environmental impact that’s associated with processing and manufacturing processes for these materials. Also, energy efficiency, so developing technologies and practices to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, and also process efficiency and new business models. So looking at ways that we can implement circular economy and industrial symbiosis, depending on where these different businesses and their end users might be located, using sensors and digital systems within a factory to optimize those manufacturing outputs, and really streamlining the manufacturing process. So we’ve got quite a few examples going on. But I think one of the really interesting projects that we funded that I’d really like to tell you all about is called Com2Coat. So this is a project that uses cutting edge computational formulation techniques to intelligently choose formulation designs that can enable the development of functional coatings that can be sprayed onto glass or steel products. So in this particular case, it’s an anti microbial coating. So using a digital technique actually allows the businesses to improve the formulation of existing coatings and making them more consistent to apply for them to be a higher quality and also for them to be produced in a more energy efficient manner. And that saves both time but also money as well as resources related to the materials that you need to make these coatings. And in this project, we’ve got quite a few names that you might recognize. It’s actually led by Pilkington technology management. So Pilkington is one of the largest glass manufacturers in the UK, as well as Tata Steel. So we’ve got two foundation industries involved in this project. And some of the other research and technology organization centres within the Innovate UK ecosystem such as centre for process innovation, as well as STFC. We’ve also got chemical industries involved as well. So we’ve got William Blythe and Becker’s coatings as well.

Jo Stansfield 

Well, that’s amazing just how varied the approaches are and that they’re all being used together. Now, Neelam, you used a term that our audience might not be familiar with, it’d be great if we could explain, which is industrial symbiosis. Can you tell us a little bit about what that means?

Neelam Mughal 

Industrial symbiosis is a simple way to think about one person’s waste is another person’s treasure. So using the outputs of one foundation industry’s manufacturing process into another. So for example, Fiacre already alluded to this, but you can use recycled glass colour into the manufacturer of new glass. But you can also use waste glass cullet that’s really difficult to recycle for glass production, because it’s not a high enough quality, you can use that glass cullet as a feedstock for cement additives to then try and develop low carbon concrete alternatives. So that’s an example.

Jo Stansfield 

That’s amazing, thank you. And you’ve also talked about the social aspects. So Furkan, I think this is a good point to bring in you and actually think about some of the diversity and inclusion, and what we can do to make our workplaces much more inclusive. So we know that glass, you know, like many of the manufacturing industries isn’t that diverse, but something that leaders are really looking to address now. In your book, Inclusive Intelligence, you’ve given lots of advice around all of these kinds of topics. What do you advise for organizations to start building a more diverse and inclusive workforce?

Furkan Karayel 

First of all, I’d like to highlight that I come from that background, very male dominated background as well. And I worked in tech industry for 10 back years. And so I know the problems, I know the challenges around it. My advice to leaders that anybody who’s listening to us today, doesn’t matter if they are in the leading position, or if they are just a new graduate, I’d like to make sure that everyone gets this clearly that your team can be the most performing team or the least performing team. And this could be related to you, actually. And I wanted to demonstrate this in the book as well, that how inclusive leaders’ teams are performing better, and how non-inclusive leaders teams lack in motivation and in performance as well. On the other side, for anybody who are interested in getting their team to the best performance, or work together in a very, you know, trusted and good environment that is going to be on educating yourself regularly. For example, I suggest leaders to allocate some time within their calendars, I don’t know if it would be Friday or Monday, doesn’t matter if it’s like 10 minutes to five minutes to 20 minutes, but book at time on your calendar to educate yourself more about all of these topics. And it’s going to be coming back to you. It’s going to be impacting the overall organization, your team, and also your wellbeing as well. And research shows that when inclusive, organizations are increasing, the organization’s wellbeing is also increasing. That makes so much sense. So it’s all about understanding what can I contribute into this team’s wellbeing, inclusion, and getting a better understanding of like,  what kind of differences and I call them superpowers. And we can turn those differences into superpowers if we really own that differences of us. And then getting an understanding of like, how can we unite and build a harmony from those differences, and, you know, learn from each other as well on the way. And I think this is what I have seen, inclusive leaders are authentically doing and implementing inclusion on a day to day basis.

Sue Black 

Now, that’s really great, Furkan. What are the first practical steps that they can take?

Furkan Karayel 

Identifying what kind of resources you have around you. I have seen some leaders are only trying to work in these diversity and inclusion fields or trying to get a better understanding of these terms is just they feel like they’re alone. Actually, we are not alone. There are so many resources around and so many people who have the same vision. So find those people who can contribute to your purpose, and also start building a team of maybe, you know, inclusive leadership team or diverse inclusion teams. That doesn’t have to be very formal teams, but these are the people that sparks, great ideas who are committed to make things change and work together. Or like what are the things that we would like to see changing as a priority, but I’m sure around you have so many resources. So many people who are thinking the same way as you. Go and find those people. And how does this come? It because if you open up a little bit about your commitment to making sure you’re inclusive, then your organization is an inclusive organization. So your commitment must be visible so that people come and find you.

Sue Black 

Yeah, that’s great. Thanks very much for candidate as anyone is that resonating with anybody?

Fiacre O’Donnell 

Yeah, I mean, it totally is coming from a manufacturing background, that traditionally did not have great diversity. Starting to understand what that is, has been really fundamental for us. I mean, this this fitted in for us in our overall sustainability strategy. We worked along with Dr. Lisa McKenna, and Business in the Community in Northern Ireland. And she pointed out to us that one of the things under what we know class as our people thing, was EDI. And I think, yeah, we can make a glass bottle. But back 10, 11 years ago, 12 years ago, when we started looking at this what, what is EDI? What did it mean to us? What was it that we were supposed to do? And the resources part is really, really important there, Furkan, because we had no idea what to do. We got together as a group of people within the business. And we thought, well, what is involved with this? What should we do only one of our ladies, Helen, who leads our women and manufacturing team now, was involved with Northwest business leaders and their diversity team. She was able to come and say, Well, the first thing we do well, let’s start out a charter, let’s set a basis of what it is that we need to do. Simple things like we will not have one female on a shift. And the thinking behind that was that a female would always have someone if they were here at three o’clock on a Saturday morning and needed a bit of support or whatever. We would look at recruitment and selection and make sure that we no single gender recruitment teams.  We were trying to take names and details off CVs and so on when they were introduced, so that we weren’t creating any kind of bias that may have existed in there for people when they when they joined, or were looking to join the company. And then really build it from there looking at all the different activities that we should be doing. But understanding the fundamentals of “Why do we exist like we do at the minute”, “why do we not have more females in the organization”, and then getting into the fundamentals of the roles that were there and the expectations of those roles and so on. And then understanding, well, that doesn’t particularly work. We then did have a big debate as to, well, how should we go about this now? Should we set a target? If we do set a target, what does that mean? And Michelle King in her book The Fix, highlighted this. And she said, well, look, if you set a target, it’s sometimes really risky to do that, because people then think sometimes that they only got a job because they’re fulfilling a target. And likewise, the other thing other people can suggest is that they only got the job because, you know, that’s what we’re looking for. And more importantly, then was for us was to start looking back at the fundamentals, the thought process within the business. And we started doing surveys amongst people that the women in manufacturing team formalized itself. But it’s grown and grown and grown. And the nice thing about it now is that it’s a diverse team. It’s not just a female team within the business. There’s male allies in there as well. But the importance of keeping refreshing the information, keeping refreshing where we go to. You know, what, a couple of years ago, we called it equality, diversity and inclusion now we’re calling an equity, diversity and inclusion as we move along that piece that exists there. And I think for me, what’s really important and this is the quote from Verna Myers. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Verna Myers. But diversity is one aspect of this. And yes, we can tokenly go out and employ more females, or more younger people, or more older people, or more disabled people, or whatever that criteria is, but her quote was: “Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance”. So I think that that second aspect of it is really the piece that resonates for me. When we have the diversity of that resource there. Well, let’s make them involved, let’s make everybody involved in what we do as a business. Let’s provide the forums for everybody to share their thoughts, their ideas, and so on. And then when you create that environment, you create a really strong dynamic team. And I think that’s what Furkan you were mentioning there about You know, there’s so many reports that show diversity within teams and so on really adds to something different. In my opinion, the does, as long as you have them included.

Sue Black 

That’s great, thanks Fiacre. Neelam have you got any examples.

Neelam Mughal 

So I just wanted to come back to for Ken’s point about the visibility, because this is one of the reasons why we’ve done some several initiatives through the TFI challenge. So for example, the creation of the Women Innovators in the Foundation Industries initiative. That was really to raise the profile of women innovators within these different industries, because we know that we obviously all have an understanding that the amount of women that are in these industries is far from ideal. But I think something else that really resonates with me is really the lack of female leaders that we see. This means that not having a good pipeline of female leaders moving through the sectors leaves a big gap for inclusivity. Because if you can’t have female role models within these industries, how will you attract the next generation of talent? How will you show that there is really room to grow within these industries? And it’s not just about recruiting females. It’s really how do they once they’ve entered into the business, how can they then progress to roles where they’re actually driving change within these industries? So the visibility aspect of it really resonates. And this is why we’d set up the women and leadership program as well. So through that we’ve supported 80 different women across these six sectors, to really learn about what the specific barriers are, to them, not just entering the industries, but they’re already in the industry. So what are the barriers for them to then progress?

Jo Stansfield 

And I think, role models is such a key point, isn’t it? Being able to see yourself, you know, within, you know, the people that you aspire to become. And I know that I have related to that on a lot of our podcast episodes, actually, is just hearing the stories from different perspectives. Roma, this is something that I know you’ve done lots of work with, with your outreach and your book, and you know, the work that you’re doing to attract far more people into engineering What motivated that and tell us about how it’s going.

Roma Agrawal 

It’s going well. I’m tired, so I think that’s a good sign that I’m keeping busy. You know, as I mentioned, I’ve worked as a structural engineer for about 14 to 15 years before coming off that wagon and joining the kind of promoting engineering and awareness and storytelling and so on. But I could certainly see that there was that lack of diversity in structural engineering, particularly because you know, it’s construction related. I remember going to site as a 22, or 23 year old back, gosh, 15 years ago now, or even nearly 20 years ago now. And there would, there were no other women on site, there was still pictures of naked women on the walls. And we have come a long way with all of that. And to be honest with you, for the first five, six years of my career, I just kept my head down and did my job, I didn’t want to stand out any more than I already did. And in fact, there’s another piece of diversity that I brought in, apart from being a woman and a woman of color, which is that I had a degree in physics, not in engineering. And I did went on to do a master’s in engineering. And there were a lot of barriers associated with getting chartered for people to take me seriously as an engineer, to even get a job in the first place. So there was a different aspect of diversity, which is quite hidden for me, in my story. And as I became more and more senior, I faced different types of barriers. And I also realized that I did have a bit of a voice around trying to make a more diverse group of people aware of what engineering is. And so I kind of ran with that. I worked with a lot of the engineering institutions with their PR teams, I did some, you know, news bits and pieces, I did role model campaigns, and so on. And eventually, it was really when I was going and doing public lectures. if you try and explain to five year olds how the Shard was built, that is honestly the most difficult audience that you can possibly communicate with. They ask the hardest questions. And that kind of broke me down right to the basics, like do I really understand what I’m talking about. And then I had to, you know, metaphorically, and literally build it back up again. And people started to say that I was good at explaining complex engineering principles to people who weren’t aware of engineering. I was then, you know, in conversations with people about writing books, because ultimately, what drove me to write the books, even though I hate writing, and my publishers get very upset with me when I say that, but but I don’t enjoy it terribly. It was that there was only so many schools I could visit here, there’s only so many people I can see in person. So this is, you know, definitely presume, period. And, and I said, oh, an amazing way to leave a legacy of this work is to have books, because books can go into school libraries, parents can get them for their kids. So I’ve actually got my fourth book coming out this year. So I’ve written two adults and two children’s books. And with each book, I’m trying to broaden the reach of what I’m writing about. So most recently in Nuts and Bolts, I’ve also really explored the different innovators and stories from the global south that are not known in the West. I’ve looked at people who didn’t have patents, but may have invented something before somebody who did have a patent and just having a patent doesn’t actually mean you’re responsible for it, even though you might get the fame and the fortune that follows. And so… Also the big social impacts. I’ve explored how engineering was used by British colonialists to oppress populations. I’ve looked at how engineering is used by women to breastfeed via the breast pump. And then just bring it back to glass, which is our topic for today, I have a chapter on the lens in my book, and I basically explain how my daughter wouldn’t exist without this glass piece of technology, the lens, because she’s an IVF, baby. And had there not been a microscope for someone to see the different cells that they brought together, she wouldn’t exist. So I’m really trying to bring engineering back to people’s everyday life and experience so that they have more of an awareness of it. Whether they go on to study engineering or not is actually less important to me. I just want people to be more aware of it.

Sue Black 

You know, I think if you talk about engineering in the UK, for some reason, people think about kind of car mechanics and stuff, which is, you know, not what it is at all really. And to me engineering is solving problems, which makes it exciting for me. I think anyone that’s interested in problem solving should at least think about becoming an engineer.

Roma Agrawal 

Absolutely.

Jo Stansfield 

So I’d like to go back to an aspects that Furkan picked up earlier about that link between inclusion and wellbeing. And so I know, Fiacre you know, and I’ve visited and circuit was a fantastic visit. And one thing that really struck me was the feel of the place and that people felt cared for and supported, and that, you know, people’s wellbeing was a priority. Can you tell us any more about  what you’ve been doing in those areas?

Fiacre O’Donnell 

Yeah, and this is back to that quote from Verna Myers again. The key aspect of all of this is having that level of inclusion within the business. And trust, obviously, is another thing that runs along with that. So we have gyms on site. And people are free to use those gems anytime they want to. You know, we do gym classes during the day. Someone wants to go to the gym class, go to the gym class, if that’s what you need to help you through the day, then go and do that. There’s no expectations on what it is that you’re going to do, because there’s a trust that you have a role to do. And you will do that role. And that comes back in spades into a business when that level of trust is there. But one of the things that we found back in the day was we have a huge resource of people who meet. We have over 2000 people know, that work across our sites. And whilst you’re only reliant on a small number of people to draw on ideas, and so on, you’re going to be limited in your expectations. So how do we cascade that site? How do we get more and more people involved? And one of the first things that we did – and there was a big learning to this, by the way, as well – was we come up with six key phrases that are our values for our business, including, like sustainability and commitment to people and so on. But instead of putting too much detail to those, we pushed those out to the business and said, “Who would like to be involved in the development of these values across the business?” And about 12% of our workforce said that they would like to be part of that which we were absolutely delighted with, to get that level working with us. And so what these guys did is they work together in teams, and they said “What does sustainability mean for the business? And how can we build that up? And what does the future look like for it?”, and so on. We made one fatal error. And that was we didn’t include that middle management piece in the business well enough. And so the project lost its momentum somewhat. So we went back and said, right, we’ve made a mistake here, but now we need to refocus. And so we’ve concentrated on that middle management, supervisors, managers, and so on in there, and we brought them on a journey as to what it is that we want to achieve right across the business. And then powering that, those people within the business have seen a dramatic change on where we are now and what it is. And that’s where I think that we get that sense of everyone being a part of this, everyone wanting to contribute to this. And we’re finding that looking at the whole EDI aspect of the business as well. And as I said, you know, in the past, when we started our women in manufacturing committee was exclusively a women’s committee. Now it’s not. There’s male allies, and there are no people who want to and see the benefit of that dynamic change within the business. This is first step for us, of course, as well, I mean, diversity has to be more than just a gender piece. But the focus on working with the gender piece to start with something that’s helping us develop a lot of the other areas as well and understandings. I find it quite funny that when we started this, the whole EDI project, we developed a charter, as I mentioned earlier, and it was signed off immediately by us all in the exco. Eight male signatures on a diversity document. So there’s a certain irony that exists. That’s changing now. We have one female on the exco at the minute. Slowly but surely that we’re getting there. And I think that was really important that was mentioned earlier there about this. If you see it, you can be it, kind of idea. You know, and demonstrating it. And so we have, I mean a couple of years ago, our furnaces in Elton were two of the biggest furnaces in the world. And the manager of those two furnaces was a female Engineering graduate. I mean, that’s not heard of in the industry, but she was the best person for it. She moved on. And her replacement was a year younger than her but a female engineering graduate, and are performing amazingly well in a role that a number of years back they would never have gotten the opportunity to be in. And I think then that links back into that whole piece about getting involved with kids as early as we possibly can. And that was really nicely explained by Roma there. And there’s a couple of projects that we’ve got ourselves involved in quite recently. The first one was the girls network, which is something that exists in… I think it’s mostly England, I’m not sure about Scotland, Wales. I know it’s not over here in Northern Ireland. But again, that’s putting young ladies round about 16 years, old GCSE level, and mentoring with them. And then in Northern Ireland, we got ourselves involved this year, and a program called Sisters In. That’s looking at those ladies here in the first year of a levels. And again, it’s bringing that level of practicality and understanding from the outside into an academic environment that’s really focused on achieving A level results, if you like, as opposed to preparing people for future careers, and so on. But those are things that we can have an influence on. And you’ve got to remember with that as well is that we have 12 or 14 ladies in here in the business who are now mentoring these young ladies. And that comes through again, and what they’re doing. You know, all of a sudden, they have a different role too. You know, they may be an account manager, they may be an accountancy person, they may be whatever. Their role is now much more fulfilled by having this link back to these other young ladies that they’re helping.

Jo Stansfield 

That’s great. Thank you Fiacre. And Neelam, before we wrap up with our quickfire questions, can you share some examples of some role models that you’ve been working with, maybe from the Women in the Foundation Industries Initiative?

Neelam Mughal 

Yeah, I’d love to. So I mean, I know some stellar women across the six foundation industries. But there’s a couple from the glass industry that I’d be happy to tell you about today, actually. So one of the women I know at Glass Futures, she’s been leading several large scale alternative fuel trials. And this amounts to over 8 million pounds worth of funding. And these industrial trials are really to evaluate what the technical, economic and environmental impacts of these new fuels of the future could have on glass furnaces. So things like hydrogen or biodiesel and using an electric furnace, for example. And these projects, they’re not just applicable to the glass sector, the learnings from them can also be used for making steel and making ceramics. And we know that these kinds of low carbon fuels are really what’s going to help decarbonize the glass industry, in line with the UK government’s goals for net zero by 2050. Another woman that I know at NSG Groups Pilkington in the UK, she has been leading on the commercial strategy across the architectural business with a particular focus on sustainability and how that can be commercialized. So she has recently read led the release of NSG Groups Pilkington Mirai, which is the glass that’s been verified as the lowest embodied carbon glass product on the market with a CO2 reduction of 50% versus their standard glass product. So these are the kinds of innovations that are coming through that can support others within the supply chain, such as architects and building developers, to really reduce the upfront carbon dioxide that’s embodied within buildings of the future. So I think it’d be the some of the things that are going on that are really exciting and leaving us with little to no excuses to be able to transform towards 2050.

Sue Black 

Wonderful. Thanks very much, Neelam. Fiacre, we can’t go without you letting us know the name of your Women’s Network at Encirc because that’s my favourite women’s network name ever.

Fiacre O’Donnell 

The women in manufacturing?

Sue Black 

No! Isn’t it Women with Bottle?

Fiacre O’Donnell 

Oh, sorry. Yeah. Sorry yeah. Women with Bottle. Yeah. So it was a nice link to that. And again, you got to be very careful, I suppose, with some of those challenges that that’s not seen as being aggressive in any way. You know, the whole point was linking that back in. But yeah, Women with Bottle was a showcase. Try and say that the ladies that we have in the business, what is the role that they’re doing and how they’re contributing. And again, if you’re there, if you see it, you can be part of this as well. You can do it.

Sue Black 

That’s great. Thank you. So quickfire question time. And our first question is, what’s your favourite thing about the foundation industries and why? And we go to Neelam first.

Neelam Mughal 

I think one of my favourite things about these six industries is just how extraordinarily ordinary they are, and how you walk around and you know, 75% of the materials you see around you are from the six sectors. And I think that gets lost in our everyday use of them. But there’s so many exciting innovations going on. You wouldn’t think of typically cement as being really exciting, but it’s probably, you know, it’s got so many developments going on, and I love that because I see a cement truck going past my house. So my husband’s always like, “stop getting excited at cement trucks”.

Sue Black 

That’s great. Thank you. Furkan.

Furkan Karayel 

My dad is a construction engineer. So for me the same thing when I see a cement factory that excites me as well. It reminds me back in those days of when my dad was very busy, and we used to go to his office and try to get everything all around the construction materials. So this is something that I get excited as well.

Sue Black 

Oh, that’s lovely. Fiacre.

Fiacre O’Donnell 

I like Neelam’s point there as all the foundation industries, they’re all around us. They exist around us. I think there’s, through the likes of the TransFIRE project, there’s this great willingness, I think, across foundation industries to work with each other. To solve some of these issues. We are looking at an energy hub, for example, here in Fermanagh, and how that could work together. And we have a number of those entities all working with us to see if we could come up with solutions. So whilst we’re different, we’re still all the same, to some level of degree. And I think that working together is going to be something that’s going to be really beneficial for us all.

Sue Black 

Great. Thank you. Next question. Which foundational material would you find it hardest to live without? Neelam.

Neelam Mughal 

I think I would have to say chemicals, because, you know, we all lead really, really busy lives. And then if I think about the things that I do to sort of de stress and make me happy is things like cleaning or baking and doing my skincare, and you can’t do any of those without chemicals.

Sue Black 

Something that lots of people don’t know. Fiacre.

Fiacre O’Donnell 

I mean, it has to be glass, doesn’t it, Sue? I mean all those littles joys we get at the weekend, or whatever, when we pop open a cork in a bottle of wine, or open a bottle of beer or something like that. It just has to be glass.

Sue Black 

Yeah, I was wondering about that. Actually, I meant to ask you. So do you get free wine and beer? Because you’re making the bottles?

Fiacre O’Donnell 

Absolutely not? No, no.

Sue Black 

Oh, god, that’s a shame.

Fiacre O’Donnell 

But I do have some that I can share with you if that’s what you’re looking for.

Sue Black 

I look forward to that. Roma.

Roma Agrawal 

Just to be different, because I was gonna say glass, I’m gonna go with steel, I think. Because I think steel is this extraordinary metal, which has all the perfect properties that allows us to build skyscrapers from it, to rail tracks, to tunnels. Basically, none of the infrastructure around us would exist without it.

Sue Black 

Great. Thank you. And last question. Which material is most like your personality, and why? And back to you first Neelam.

Neelam Mughal 

Thinking about all of the six, I think I am probably most like glass. I think that I’m quite a transparent person, like I mentioned earlier. I don’t have very good poker face, you can always tell that I’m sort of thinking. And I think like glass, I’m quite a reflective person, as well. I do have a need to understand the vision around things. But I also love to have other perspectives. So that’s why I feel mostly like glass.

Sue Black 

That’s great, thank you, Fiacre.

Fiacre O’Donnell 

I’m going to default to glass as well. So I mean, ultimately, if I take my insights profile here, you know, I’m very much green. And that’s about that, that social aspect and involving me and so on, along with the yellow that exists there. And I think that’s what glass is all about. I think class is all about that social aspect that we have.

Sue Black 

Great, thank you. Roma.

Roma Agrawal 

I’m gonna go with concrete. I am known for standing next to concrete buildings and stroking them, which is very normal behaviour.

Sue Black 

That is hilarious

Roma Agrawal 

The reason I say concrete, is because it starts off as one thing, it then gets transformed into a liquid. And then that liquid can kind of be moulded into any shape you like. And it solidifies back into being solid. And it creates things of great beauty and is quite strong, but also cracks and the cracks are also part of its strength. I think there’s a lot of multifaceted aspects to concrete that a lot of us don’t appreciate. And I feel like I have moulded myself into lots of different places and new things through my life. So concrete.

Sue Black 

Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you very much.  Neelam, Roma, Fiacre and Furkan, it’s been a great discussion. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Neelam Mughal 

Thanks for having us, Sue.

Fiacre O’Donnell 

Thank you Sue, thank you, Jo.

Roma Agrawal 

Thank you

—

Sue Black

Thank you for joining us for this Equity Edge episode.

Jo Stansfield

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Sue Black

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