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Rodrigo Suarez Barrera is a Hydropower Engineer atÌýMulticonsultÌýGroup, a leading firm of consulting engineers with a head office in Norway.ÌýHe’sÌýbeen with the company since 2018 and has collaborated in more than 29 hydropower projects and proposals with responsibilities ranging from project management to due diligence and design of hydropower projects in various stages of engineering. His work has allowed him to manage a multidisciplinary team in the UK, Norway, Pakistan, and Malawi. He has a BEng in Civil Engineering and a Master of Science in Hydropower Development and Hydropower Engineering.Ìý

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, hydro, project, norway, civil engineering, students, engineering, hydropower, linkedin, work, learn, skills, podcast, question, python, engineer, country, challenge, uk, moving

SPEAKERS
Rodrigo Suarez Barrera, Amy Lourenco

Amy Lourenco Ìý00:04
Hi everyone, this is ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº careers podcast future talk. My name is Amy Lourenco, senior careers consultant at ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº. On this podcast which is powered by ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº Minds, we will be talking with professionals in different sectors about their career journeys and insights in relation to employability topics. This series is packed with guests who are change makers and innovators in their respective industries, and was created by the engineering careers team to help our students and graduates find out more about various professional experiences. Each episode will have a guest who will share their professional insights and provide valuable information relating to careers. The episodes will be available on Spotify, Apple podcast, and SoundCloud on a weekly basis. On today's episode, I'm so pleased to be able to introduce our guests Rodrigo Suarez Barrera. He is a hydropower engineer Multi Consult Group, a leading firm of consulting engineers with a head office in Norway. He's been with the company since 2018, and collaborated with more than 29 hydropower projects and proposals with responsibilities ranging from project management to due diligence and design of hydropower projects in various stages of engineering. His work has allowed him to manage a multidisciplinary team in the UK and Norway, Pakistan and Malawi. He has a BA ended civil engineering and a Master of Science in hydropower development and hydropower engineering. So welcome to the podcast. Reggie grant, thank you so much for joining us today. No, thank you, Amy. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. antastic, and you're our second guest on the podcast, which is just amazing. Oh, well, it's an honor. It's really it's really an honor. Thank you. So my first question, we've got a few questions for you today is that you worked as a design engineer alongside your studies for both your undergrad and postgraduate degrees. How did this work experience help inform your long term career plans and decision to pursue hydropower engineering.

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌýÌý01:59
So as you know, from from my CV, and like the description that you read from the beginning, I'm originally from Venezuela, and Venezuela. It's it's a relevant country, when you talk about hydro power. For many, many years, we have the biggest hydro power plant in the world. And I come from a family of hydraulic engineers. thing is that my family never was involved with hydro power. Because I live in the north of the country hydro powers, all the way on the south part of the country. So even in university, I never pay too much attention to hydro power, every time the professor starts speaking about it, I'd say like, Yeah, well, I will never use these in my in my professional life. So why should I bother. But then life came around and because of a difficult political situation in my country, I have I have I was forced to move to Chile. And the first company where I worked with, they were specialists in hydro power. And I absolutely regretted that I didn't pay attention for those lectures and classes in my university. At the time, they had the biggest hydro power plant construction on the country. And I just had to learn from scratch I just had to get involved with everything from the beginning and didn't even knew the terms they were using referring to the different parts of the power plant and so on. But, I felt so much in love with this engineering field with the whole concept of a power plant of transforming the water into electricity. So if you asked me about what is the how the work experience define my professional expertise, I will say 100% I mean, as I say, I was I was I thought that I was going to end up doing a different kinds of hydraulic projects. And now I just realized that that was not what I liked. I liked I realized that just because I started working so I say that I say that's the most important part of my professional life without a doubt.

Amy Lourenco Ìý04:30
Fantastic. So it sounds like you had a real change there from okay studying something and thinking Oh, okay, that's not for me. And then actually experience of it completely changed your your mind.

Rodrigo Suarez Barrera 04:44
Yeah, exactly. Because I again met my family with a hydraulic, hydraulic family. My dad is a hydraulic engineer and my brother is a hydraulic engineer, so I thought, you know, I will just carry on with the family business. doing what they do and everything. I never thought that it was going to end up in what I'm doing by now. But I love it.

Amy Lourenco Ìý05:09
That's fantastic. And so how did you end up in the UK?

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý05:14
That's a long story. But let's say that in Chile, I, I moved to Chile when it was the boom of hydro power, construction of power plants, and they were discovering all this new form of energy, and they were putting everywhere in the country. But there was also a big backlash, because most of these projects were not considering the environmental and social issues of each of each side. So a campaign started in the country to try to stop so many projects to be developed in the wrong way. And at the end, hydropower got like a bad name in Chile, to the point that one time I had an accident, and I need some, you know, some when you say like treatment, to recover, and everything, and I had this massage, and I and the person who was doing them that he asked me like, what do you do for a living? No, I'm 100 power engineer. And you can know how the pressure just went up. You know, like, I don't like this guy. So of course, that bad propaganda for our to hydro power resulted in a lot of projects being halted. And I didn't want to do anything else. So I took the opportunity to move to Norway. At the time, I was lucky enough to be accepted there in Norway. And I don't know if if your students own or the listeners of the podcast, no. But Norway, one of the countries with the highest percentage of hydro power, hydro power in the world, actually. So it was very lucky to end up in Norway for a couple of years. And then a Norwegian company contacted me, and they told me Do you want to come work with us? And I say, of course I want to. The only problem is I don't I don't speak a lot of Norwegian. And they say no problem. Come to the UK tour office in the UK. And as you can see, I'm not an expert in English either, but at least I speak it better than I speak Norwegian. So. Wow. That's

Amy Lourenco Ìý07:41
an amazing story. Really interesting. And I had no idea about the backlash on hydro power. From my mind. I thought it was like more of a sustainable energy source. So yeah, surprising.

Rodrigo Suarez Barrera 07:53
Yeah, it's just that in Latin America, we are not very used to take environmental and social consequences of products really seriously. You have been doing that very well here in Europe, in the UK, Norway and the rest of Europe for a long time. But that's just a trend that it's starting in, in Latin America. And I can say that many products, they just did whatever they wanted, and they did it really badly. So the final consequences was very bad for the environment. And that was very that was noticed by the population and with the social media and everything that just went crazy everywhere. So it is it is a good alternative to renewable energies, hydro power, but when it's when it's done with the environment in mind, which is what we try to do in in multi consultant list

Amy Lourenco Ìý08:58
is well that makes sense. Thank you for educating me, do we have any hydro power in the UK.

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý09:04
There is a lot of hydro power in the north in Scotland. And you have one of the biggest power plants in Wales actually. In Wales, there is a there is a very interesting one because it's normally in hydro power you need let's say a difference in elevation. In the water, basically you need a waterfall. And normally you take the water falling from that waterfall to move a turbine. But in Wales, what they have done is that they put two lakes one below each other. And when they need electricity, they just let the water from the upper Lake flow to the lower Lake moving a turbine. And when they don't need the energy when there is excess of energy, they pump the water from the lower Lake back up to the upper lake. So it's just like a battery whenever you need. You just turn you just Whatever like you need and that's it. It's very, very clever. Wow, that's clever. Yeah, very good.

Amy Lourenco Ìý10:10
Amazing. I feel like I've learned so much already. And then my second question is, do you have any non engineering or technical work experience or skills, which you feel have proved valuable in your current work.

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý10:27
Um, from, from the non engineering point of view, since I was a kid, I love taking photography before before Instagram or anything like that. I saw my dad using his film camera with all this knobs and cranks and things that you need to operate to take a proper photography. And I just was very curious about that. And I became a photographer while I was in university, which I never planned to become like a professional photographer, but it happens just by accident. And nowadays, I think it's what is one of the best things that I could do. Because when you go to a private, when you go to a site, you need you, there is not a lot of opportunity to go into a space at a specific construction site. So you had to make the most of take the most advantage of every time you visit. And with photography, knowing having this, let's say idea photography, you know how to tell a story, you know, like, Okay, I'm going to take a picture like this, because it will show this, this and that and, and the people who are looking at the picture will understand it. Sometimes we we have that bad habit of just raising our cell phones, looking through the screen and just take the shot without a lot of thinking. So I will say photography for without a doubt. Also no non technical, non technical, let's say on is throwing. As an engineer, you communicate with drawings, we are very bad using words as you can see. And we tend to just take a piece of paper, wherever we are, just take a piece of paper, a pen, and just make a quick drawing, explaining things. So knowing about the basics of drawing and perspective and everything, it's, it's very helpful. And finally, I will say that coding, learning how to code is of most important these days. Especially with how everything it's moving to the digital world. The more you know how to code, the less work you will do. And the less work the less, the less errors you're going to make. And me being as lazy as I can be coding has been just a miracle because you just code everything. And every time you need something, you know that it's there, it's ready to go. So yeah, definitely.

Amy Lourenco Ìý13:18
Happiness is a really interesting mix of like the creative skills that you've learned through photography and drawing, and then more like technical skills through through coding, and what sort of programming languages do you use and on a daily basis in your work.

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý13:32
Um, many people know how to use Excel. I mean, they know how to use the formulas in Excel. And they know that if they they press this cell, and they put a sign and so on, they will do some mathematical functions. And that's it. But Excel on the back of Excel, there is a programming language called VBA, Visual Basic for Applications. And be so basic for application. It's an evolution of language that I used to I used to play with when I was a kid called Quick, basic. So I will definitely encourage anyone in not even engineering. Anyone who uses Excel how to learn Visual Basic is really easy to learn, really, really easy to learn. And it's so powerful that you cannot imagine what you can do with it. And these days, I'm doing the transition and I feel old because again, I was one of those cranky old guys say now I don't need this. I'm very good with basic and all that but I'm learning Python. And Python is just a miracle. It's it's incredible what you can do with Python in two lines of code. I'm so I'm so impressed with it that I'm even started to doubt about Excel. Well, I thought Excel was like the biggest best invention ever. And now I see it like, I could do this faster in Python. So I will say those two, four to start with. Hmm.

Amy Lourenco Ìý15:14
Fabulous. And so for for both VBA and Python, have you been sort of teaching yourself? How would you encourage people to learn

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý15:26
VBA it's, it's really simple to learn by yourself. I mean, there are many, many resources on YouTube, and many, many websites that that teach you step by step how to start from scratch. And I will, I will say the same with Python. with Python, I paid like 12 pounds on Udemy, it's very cheap to learn. And there are very good lecturers and teachers that could teach you the basic, but as any coding language, you need to have a project in mind to properly learn it because you know, all the basics, you know how this works, you know, that work, but until you are not sit down and doing something that you like, like, okay, it's when you start facing challenges that you start asking yourself, okay, maybe I should learn these a little bit more, and so on. So, but definitely, both of them can be learned by yourself, no problem.

Amy Lourenco Ìý16:23
Obviously, you just need something that you can use to put it into practice, I guess,

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý16:28
exactly. You just need a project that you feel like you feel passionate about. So you say, Okay, I will do this in just for fun.

Amy Lourenco Ìý16:38
Absolutely. And then my next question is kind of related to the pandemic and the current situation. So what do you think students and recent graduates can be doing now, when the at the time where the job market is quite challenging?

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý16:53
It's not easy, it's not easy, because everyone is in a difficult position right now. And with a whole pandemic, and the first lockdown came by, I remember that I was quite shocked. Even though even though having come from a country with a lot of political instability, let's say that I'm a little bit used to crisis, this hated another complete level that I was also quite, you know, worried about what what's going to happen. And I remembered that long, long time ago, I read that in in the previous crisis, worldwide crisis with watch, which would, which was the 2008. One, the Australian Government, they made it easy to the people who were unemployed, to train itself. They, I don't remember if there was incentives or, but they help people to gain new skills during the crisis. And that, as far as I know, pay paid off later, when everything came back to normal. So I will say that just take a step back. Think what, especially to the students and graduates think what is, let's say, trending right now in the job market, for the job that you're trying to get. And just take the opportunity right now and try to get yourself new skills. I did it with Python. And I cannot tell you how easy has made my life, you know, in the office and everything with the prices that we're working with. So that that will be my main thing, just try to learn new skills and try to think what the employers are looking forward and try to get a notion of that. And in the field, where I'm working with, which is civil engineering, everything to moving towards what it's called be BIM building information modeling, which is basically taking the project and building it in 3d, and just looking at everything in 3d. That's what it's right now trending. And if your students or any listener is not familiar with that, I will say try to get to because that's the future right now.

Amy Lourenco Ìý19:39
I'm gonna say building information modeling Is it is it like CAD or something like that, or is it like the next evolution of that?

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý19:46
It's it's the next evolution of that and again, that's an old cranky guy that I am I say lawn with cat I'm, I'm good enough. I do all my designs in CAD, but what you see right now it's companies moving towards that direction to having the 3d model. Just as an example, many Norwegian construction companies, now they don't have drawings. They just had the guys on the side with an iPad, and the three the 3d model of what they are doing in the iPad and just building like that. So they go paperless basically. And of course, no way. It's, it's always in adopting the new technologies and everything, but it gives you hands of what it's going to happen little by little to the rest of the countries. So that's the future.

Amy Lourenco Ìý20:39
Great, thank you. That's such good advice in terms of kind of upskilling yourself during that during this time and kind of learning new things. It's been a real theme through what we've talked about so far. And so my next question is around kind of your international career, because obviously, as you mentioned, you've worked in Venezuela, Chile, Norway, UK, it's been quite an international career for you. And through your current role, I think you've managed multidisciplinary teams in the UK, Norway, Pakistan and Malawi, as well. So what have been some of the benefits that you found to working with a global team? And what challenges have you encountered professionally and overcome due to COVID in relation to this?

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý21:25
Well, one of the benefits on uninspected benefits of working with an international team, especially based in different locations around the world was that to take advantage of the time difference. In a specific project, we have this guy working in Pakistan with us. And I don't remember right now, but there are several hours difference with Pakistan. So we just by the end of the day, or during the day, we just gave gave him a list of tasks. And when he was awake, we were sleeping. So that was unexpectedly efficient, that when we wake up, and we went to the office, and after having our coffee or whatever, we just opened the email, and this guy was already I don't know, almost ready with all the tasks. And that it's, it's really, it's really nice just to just to be able to just because in your head, you think, Okay, I'm going to give him this, and I will wait till he has. But he did it all while you were sleeping. So it was very efficient to live that way. So yeah, the use of time difference, it's one of them. The The other benefit is that you need to get creative on how you're going to communicate your ideas. Many of these people don't speak your own language, well, I don't speak your native language, for instance. So sometimes we're badly used to whatever we say, is interpreted in the right way straight away. And with people who are known native speakers, you have to learn all the ways to explain it. And you have to be creative in that, in that in that way. Um, that that has been really interesting actually. Because it, it puts you, it puts you in a in a situation at first where you don't know what to do. But then you start like thinking and coming with ideas and Okay, and and when, when the final product is there, and you and you know that you did a good job communicating, that's one of the best feelings ever. And another benefit is that it makes you It forces you to be flexible. And what I mean with this is that you have different cultures working in the same pod project. And sometimes the people from Malawi have a different way to do things that the people from the UK or the people from Ecuador or whatever. So if you are really stiff, and and you're one of these people who say things should be done this way, and only this way, you're going to have a terrible time. You have to adapt, you have to adapt to the ways and you have to learn tricks like okay, I know that the people from Malawi likes this way of working and they like that way of working. So you have to be very flexible with it. And when you adapt to that, you're basically ready for whatever comes to you. That's it, it's very nice to feel it's a very nice sensation. With the with the COVID the calendars have been massive. Civil Engineering is one of those professions where you have to be on site from time to time and being on site. It is just not because you need to it's not because it's in the contract is because it actually helps you to understand the project, the the challenges and all that. So not being able to travel to a place and understand what's happening is a massive challenge right now. We at the moment, we're doing a pilot in Kenya, and we haven't been able to visit the site because of this reason. And the challenges have been massive. We have we have a local, local staff they're trying to show you show us with pictures and trying to explain how it works. And but it's never the same as being there and just understand, okay, this is like this. And this is like that, you know. So that's has been a major challenge. Another one is that everything, and I think we, all of us here in the UK feel the same way. Everything is moving really slow at the moment. Projects are slow, clients are slow decision makings are very slow because of the uncertainty of what's going to happen, and so on. So that plus the restrictions and everything has been a massive challenge. But with the vaccine and everything, we hope that everything gets better quite soon. So let's see crossing fingers.

Amy Lourenco Ìý26:25
Absolutely. Fingers firmly crossed on that one. Yeah. And hopefully we can see like, light at the end of the tunnel. It's really interesting what you're saying there about the the positives and the benefits I had never thought about, like taking advantage of the timezone difference. Of course you can, you know, get more done, because you're new working 24 hours a day like well, one is sleeping, we are the ones awake doing the work. And then you switch over to type thing. That's, that's amazing. Yeah, really interesting. And I think what you're saying about being flexible is is really important is that it's like having that growth mindset that you are always learning and learning about ways people work in different cultures and ways to communicate as well. You're saying I'm using creativity? Yeah, really fascinating stuff.

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý27:15
No, it's, it's amazing. It's truly amazing. And you get to know these people, because you're going to work with them in projects that are going to last for years, probably. So you get to know them quite well. And at the end, they started being when the project starts, you're their colleagues, but by the end, you're their friends. And, and that's something amazing because some clients at the beginning, were a little bit reluctant to get out of her comfort zone. So when you visit a new place, and they do something that you are not used to you feel uncomfortable, it's in our add on, I'm not going to dance, to open the project or whatever. But after a while after you understand there's way and Why'd they do it? It's just very, very, very nice. It's Yeah.

Amy Lourenco Ìý28:08
Is that a real thing? Do people dance to project?

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý28:13
You know that sometimes there are different let's say there are different ceremonies in different countries. So in Latin America, it's when they finish a building, for instance, in Venezuela, when they finish a building, they put a flag on top, you know, like Yes, we did, you know, we reach the top floor into where they tend to put like a plant. If I remember it, it's it's still remember, they put like a plant with a flag or something. And, and it's an occasion of celebration every time so every time you finished anything. It's just an excuse to celebrate. So sometimes they ban sometimes they do all the things which are nice. But yeah, definitely the band's nice there.

Amy Lourenco Ìý29:06
I love that sounds like a big party every time you finish a project.

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý29:10
We make excuse to party. That's that's the real deal. Yeah.

Amy Lourenco Ìý29:16
I realize. So my next comment questions are about networking. And what would you say to students and graduates so you have hesitancy when it comes to networking events or through LinkedIn? And how has your experience been of proactively creating connections in the industry for yourself or, or having to reach or having others people reach out to you?

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý29:38
Um, well, obviously, obviously, networking on LinkedIn, it's, it's not a non ideal. Because part of the networking is to get to know the other people. I mean, when when when you go out and you meet new people, you're not just meeting them. Because of the sake of it, you really want to establish a relationship with them, you want to, to learn from them you want, let's say, a mutually beneficial relationship with them. And that's sometimes you can get a feeling of how the other person, how is the other person, when you see that face to face, it's the easiest way to do it. So it's it's a challenge the way to do it in LinkedIn, it's, it's not impossible. But it's challenge. I was just a couple of weeks ago, I was speaking with a friend who is an expert in marketing. And, and she was telling me that there is this seven contacts rule on LinkedIn, which I've never heard about, which is that which is basically whenever you want someone to remember you, you need to have at least seven contacts with that people with a person. I haven't, I haven't still put it in practice. But apparently, this is something marketing wise that they use a lot. Nevertheless, saying that it's a challenge and saying that it's not ideal. It's just LinkedIn is just a tool like any other one. During the pandemic, of course, during the lockdown, we, I personally have had a lot more time to be being and just been checking what what the rest of the people is doing. And one of the things that accidentally I saw doing is just posting things that I found interesting about my field about civil engineering. And I have had a very good reception of those of those posts, the accidental post, again, that I've done. And that has resulted in professionals reaching me for let's say, let's collaborate, let's work together. We have this product, you put a video about this, we have a product that it just stops this problem and so on. So the network is there, the people it's there. Yes, it's a challenge. But still, it's not impossible. And you even can get some really good benefits professional benefits from it. We are right now in the process of exploring a new deal a new partnership with with some people that I met on LinkedIn. So the possibilities are there. It's more difficult. But you can do it. So yeah, that's that's basically it. That's basically what I think about about the networking on LinkedIn is challenging, but it's not impossible.

Amy Lourenco Ìý33:06
Fabulous. And I love that it's seven contacts that seems quite a lot but I suppose if you were to and you might have messaged someone you might post something on your like home feed a couple of times or like repost articles. It's not necessarily seven times directly contacting that person is it's more like seven times they might see your your pace on a feed or whatever.

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý33:27
Yeah, exactly. It's not i'm not encouraging anyone to just start messenger and like a crazy like someone like Hey, hey, hey, hey, seven times 14 times. But yeah, I'm guessing that it's seven different contexts, different ways of contacting you. Yes, exactly.

Amy Lourenco Ìý33:46
And, and when you were sharing those posts on your LinkedIn where they things that you were writing you have like articles you've created yourself or more like sharing things, other things that you'd read, like existing articles or videos or whatever,

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý34:01
it's been a mix. I started doing things by my own things in my my own time that I I was just curious about and I thought that maybe someone else find it useful, who knows. And then of course with with the, with all the time that we have had during the lockdown and everything I've been looking watching videos, pictures and things that I found interesting and at the same time there has been some events and in the world that has regarding hydropower, civil engineering, natural events, so on that I found interesting. So it's just a matter of just taking those videos those speaker putting it on my let's say my wall, I don't know if that's the correct term and LinkedIn but and just giving the right credits and writing something that caught my attention. Not Not so long ago, there was a massive flood event in India caused by a glacier basically broken, breaking, breaking up and just releasing a lot of water in very little time. And I just posted there and it just say, Okay, this is a graph, it's, it's like the term term, a technical term. And you can see here that it's, it's happening because of this or this and that. And I don't know how many views that video had and how many comments but it's, it was crazy with like 20,000 views and hundreds of comments. And so something as simple as that, as you're just taking a video giving your point of view about the video and just leaving there just for the rest of the people to watch, it can have a lot of benefits professionally later for you.

Amy Lourenco Ìý35:59
Fabulous. So when you're saying it had all those views that was like after you post it, like it didn't have the views before and since you posted it, more people saw right type thing?

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý36:08
Yeah, exactly. I took I took the video from a newspaper that I was reading, and I just posted on LinkedIn and LinkedIn gate gives you all these analytics and things. And I just thought that he was going to be seen by my friends and colleagues and let's say my 10 people tops. But somehow people in France took it really seriously. And they started sharing people in Paris in there in Spain. And I, when I was aware, there was like, 20,000 people watching the page. And some of them contact me because Oh, so your company? Does this kind of analysis? Yeah, well, yeah, we do. Actually we do. But that wasn't the that the goal of the PDF? Yes, of course. Wow. So

Amy Lourenco Ìý36:57
You went viral pretty much?

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý37:00
I wouldn't, I wouldn't call it like that. But I'm very happy with my numbers, let's say.

Amy Lourenco Ìý37:07
Very good. Yeah, very good. And so when we're thinking about networking, is there one thing in particular that you would encourage students and graduates to keep in mind when reaching out to their networks, or gaining industry knowledge from professionals, um,

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý37:23
Something, something that I that I experienced myself, since I graduate was that at the beginning, I was very shy. I was very, let's say, intimidated, because sometimes you were networking with this, I don't know, Director of this company, a guy that has 40 plus years of experience, and white hair and all that. And sometimes you say, like, why would this guy want to have anything to do with me, you know, I'm just a student or just graduating or whatever. But I, I've learned with time that not being shy, can have massive, massive advantages. And I started to learn that there is no, there is no worse possible situation than just asking. And there is no losses here. It's just winning, you know, so if you're asked a simple question, or if you try it, or you actually show interest in what they're doing, or what you could be doing with them and so on, and you just communicate I think that's, that can be that can be the best thing you can do for your professional life. So I will say that don't be shy that that's my message just ask around. It doesn't matter if sometimes you feel like a fool asking around it doesn't matter because at the end those questions will even though if you if they are really obvious to you, sometimes they're not very obvious to the rest of the people so sometimes it actually open store like asking simple questions. And And again, it's it's showing interest and creativity is not just i want i wish i i want to work with you in your company because I don't know you're a Norwegian company and I like Norway. Isn't isn't is not just that is is trying to actually show interest. I know that in Norway they do this this and that and doing your homework, try to investigate a little bit. Try to be creative with the information that you have and try and with all those just tried to ask questions and don't be shine. So yeah, I will say that don't be shy, show interest and be creative. That's it.

Amy Lourenco Ìý40:02
You've got nothing to lose, basically, is what you're saying.

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý40:05
You got nothing to lose, and you have a lot to win. So it's, again, the worst possible situation. It's the one that you are right now. So it's not bad at all. So yeah.

Amy Lourenco Ìý40:19
Thanks. Thank you. And my last question is, we've talked a lot about skills today. And you've got quite a few that are really important for your industries. We've talked about curiosity, flexibility, having that growth mindset, and lots of creativity and being resilient. And so there's the technical skills like coding and drawing. And aside from what we've already discussed, or it could be one of these skills I've just mentioned, what do you think is like the number one sort of skill that's required to succeed in your industry?

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý40:51
Hmm. It's a very tough question. Because I wouldn't say that it's just a single a single skill that will open all the doors for you. But I will say it's, it's a mixture of everything that we have talked about. But if I had to name one, well, let's say I have to name two, I will say productivity and creativity. There is nothing worse than someone who is who doesn't want to do anything that is just sitting there waiting for instructions. That's, that's the worst that you can do professionally. If you're one of those people who are curious if you're one of those people who just look, okay, how does this work? Okay, it's working like this, how can I make it better or, you know, curiosity and productivity opens many, many doors. Not only in engineering, I think it's that this applies to most fields. But I will say that practicality and taking and taking a step back, and looking at everything, how everything works, sometimes when I have the chance to interview students, because multi consult had this program for students called must, well, we take students, and we put them to work in our real life project with real life lines. So they are basically delivering multi console product, it's not just like a mock up, or just like, Yeah, you did not have a golden story. It's actually like a real, a real pride for a real client. And when I was interviewing students for this, for this program, let's say that I was, I was interviewing a mechanical engineer, they were so focused on the mechanical part, and say, No, I can do this. And I can do this piece. And I can do this gear, and so on, so on, so on. But the students that really, let's say, were highlighted were the ones that just took like, a step back and say, Okay, I'm going to work in a renewable energy project. That means that I need to look at the environmental, I need to look at the social, I need to look at the hydrology, I need to look at this, even if it was out of their expertise, they knew that they had to look at everything, just to make it work. He was not only the mechanical body was everything. And and I think that's a very badly valid skill. Sometimes we we tend to box ourselves too much in what we do with and we were really experts in turning the screw clockwise. But they asked us to turn it counterclockwise, we we didn't know what to do. So if I have to know named the best ones, I will say, productivity, creativity, and take a step back and have an holistic view of what you're doing or what you're involved.

Amy Lourenco Ìý44:21
It's such a lovely, neat summary. Thank you. And I think it really times with the kind of engineering education that we tried to do at ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº and with our integrated engineering program for undergraduates, a lot of our projects, we try and have like multidisciplinary teams of engineers. So we get people from different disciplines working together, exactly for that reason to give that holistic view and so that students start to kind of think outside of their discipline and think about problems in that way. So yeah, it's really, really exciting to hear that that's kind of something that's really valued in industry, because that's what we're trying to achieve.

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý44:57
No and I believe I believe that you're doing a great job. Because the many of the students that we interviewed before for this problem that I was talking about were from ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº. And and I remember that looking at the score sheet that we had for them, they were the highest scores one. Because of that, because they are proactive, they look at, they take a step back and look at everything. So that's really, really valuable.

Amy Lourenco Ìý45:21
That's amazing to hear. That's what we like. Well, thank you, Rodrigo. Like that's a lovely way to end the podcast episode today. So thank you so much for joining our podcast and sharing your valuable insights. We really, really appreciate your time.

Rodrigo Suarez BarreraÌý45:39
Now, thank you. Thank you, Amy, for having me. I hope that my accent and then my tongue twister words that sometimes I tried to say wasn't a challenge, but it was really lovely to be here. And I hope I really hope to all your students and and listeners that they have a fantastic professional career. And if you know if you need if you need anything else, I mean, if you need help or whatever, my email is always open multicam consult so just reach me and I will do my best to help you.

Amy Lourenco Ìý46:18
Thank you Rodrigo. That's really generous. And yeah, you did great. So thank you so much. And thank you to all our audience for listening to this episode. Keep an eye out for more episodes, which will be released weekly on audio platforms such as Spotify, apple, podcasts and SoundCloud. Thank you, everyone.
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