IT was International Women in Engineering Day last Friday and BT is celebrating the achievements of Scotland’s female engineers.

The day was organised by the Women’s Engineering Society to raise the profile of women in engineering and highlight amazing careers in engineering and technical roles for girls.

At BT and Openreach, these include frontline engineering, keeping people connected; switch and transmission roles to keep the networks running; heat and energy engineering; mechanics; software engineering and many other technical roles.

Kirsty McGinlay, from Dalry, worked part-time in a bakery, horse yard, chip shop and cattery before joining Openreach straight from school. Now, at the age of 21, she’s one of the team co-ordinating the build of Openreach’s high-speed networks across Scotland.

She’s responsible for getting the right equipment installed into telephone exchanges nationwide to support superfast and ultrafast broadband links - and making sure there’s enough capacity in the exchanges to meet the ever-increasing demand for these services.

A big part of her job is alarm testing and monitoring equipment to spot any problems and make sure they’re quickly put right. Previously, she’s also planned new infrastructure for housing developments and worked on reducing faults in the copper network.

Kirsty, a keen horsewoman, said: “I chose a career in engineering because I thought BT was a great company to work for with plenty of opportunities to learn, develop and progress. What I like best about my job is that at the end of the day I go home feeling like I have made a difference.”